LASER INTERFEROMETER GRAVITATIONAL WAVE OBSERVATORY - LIGO - CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Document Type LIGO-P040050-00-Z 2004/12/31 Upper Limits from the LIGO and TAMA Detectors on the Rate of Gravitational-Wave Bursts

We report the results of the first joint search for gravitational waves by the TAMA and LIGO collaborations. We looked for millisecond-scale unmodelled gravitational-wave bursts in 473hr of coincident data collected during early 2003. No candidate signals were found. We set an upper limit of 0.12 events per day on the rate of gravitational-wave transients, at 90% confidence level. Using simulated signals, we estimate that our network was sensitive to gravitational-wave bursts with root-sum-square amplitude above approximately 2 × 10 Hz−1/2 in the frequency band [700,2000] Hz. We describe the details of this collaborative search, with particular emphasis on its advantages and disadvantages compared to searches by LIGO and TAMA separately using the same data. We also highlight some of the challenges of searching for gravitational-wave bursts using a network of detectors with different sensitivities and orientations.