The GEO 600 laser interferometer with 600 m armlength is part of a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors. Due to the use of advanced technologies like multiple pendulum suspensions with a monolithic last stage and signal recycling, the anticipated sensitivity of GEO 600 is close to the initial sensitivity of detectors with several kilometres armlength. This paper describes the subsystems of GEO 600, the status of the detector by September 2001 and the plans towards the first science run.

We report on an all-sky search with the LIGO detectors for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency range 50 -1000 Hz and with the frequency's time derivative in the range ÿ1 10 ÿ8 Hz s ÿ1 to zero. Data from the fourth LIGO science run (S4) have been used in this search. Three different semicoherent methods of transforming and summing strain power from short Fourier transforms (SFTs) of the calibrated data have been used. The first, known as StackSlide, averages normalized power from each SFT. A ''weighted Hough'' scheme is also developed and used, which also allows for a multiinterferometer search. The third method, known as PowerFlux, is a variant of the StackSlide method in which the power is weighted before summing. In both the weighted Hough and PowerFlux methods, the weights are chosen according to the noise and detector antenna-pattern to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. The respective advantages and disadvantages of these methods are discussed. Observing no evidence of periodic gravitational radiation, we report upper limits; we interpret these as limits on this radiation from isolated rotating neutron stars. The best population-based upper limit with 95% confidence on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude, found for simulated sources distributed isotropically across the sky and with isotropically distributed spin axes, is 4:28 10 ÿ24 (near 140 Hz). Strict upper limits are also obtained for small patches on the sky for best-case and worst-case inclinations of the spin axes.

We carry out two searches for periodic gravitational waves using the most sensitive few hours of data from the second LIGO science run. Both searches exploit fully coherent matched filtering and cover wide areas of parameter space, an innovation over previous analyses which requires considerable algorithm development and computational power. The first search is targeted at isolated, previously unknown neutron stars, covers the entire sky in the frequency band 160 -728.8 Hz, and assumes a frequency derivative of less than 4 10 ÿ10 Hz=s. The second search targets the accreting neutron star in the lowmass x-ray binary Scorpius X-1 and covers the frequency bands 464-484 Hz and 604-624 Hz as well as the two relevant binary orbit parameters. Because of the high computational cost of these searches we limit the analyses to the most sensitive 10 hours and 6 hours of data, respectively. Given the limited sensitivity and duration of the analyzed data set, we do not attempt deep follow-up studies. Rather we concentrate on demonstrating the data analysis method on a real data set and present our results as upper limits over large volumes of the parameter space. In order to achieve this, we look for coincidences in parameter space between the Livingston and Hanford 4-km interferometers. For isolated neutron stars our 95% confidence level upper limits on the gravitational wave strain amplitude range from 6:6 10 ÿ23 to 1 10 ÿ21 across the frequency band; for Scorpius X-1 they range from 1:7 10 ÿ22 to 1:3 10 ÿ21 across the two 20-Hz frequency bands. The upper limits presented in this paper are the first broadband wide parameter space upper limits on periodic gravitational waves from coherent search techniques. The methods developed here lay the foundations for upcoming hierarchical searches of more sensitive data which may detect astrophysical signals.

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For 17 days in August and September 2002, the LIGO and GEO interferometer gravitational wave detectors were operated in coincidence to produce their first data for scientific analysis. Although the detectors were still far from their design sensitivity levels, the data can be used to place better upper limits on the flux of gravitational waves incident on the earth than previous direct measurements. This paper describes the instruments and the data in some detail, as a companion to analysis papers based on the first data. r