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Lists of participants and their affiliations appear at the end of the paper.
Nature. 2009 Aug 20;460(7258):990-4. doi: 10.1038/nature08278.
A stochastic background of gravitational waves is expected to arise from a superposition of a large number of unresolved gravitational-wave sources of astrophysical and cosmological origin. It should carry unique signatures from the earliest epochs in the evolution of the Universe, inaccessible to standard astrophysical observations. Direct measurements of the amplitude of this background are therefore of fundamental importance for understanding the evolution of the Universe when it was younger than one minute. Here we report limits on the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational-wave background using the data from a two-year science run of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). Our result constrains the energy density of the stochastic gravitational-wave background normalized by the critical energy density of the Universe, in the frequency band around 100 Hz, to be <6.9 x 10(-6) at 95% confidence. The data rule out models of early Universe evolution with relatively large equation-of-state parameter, as well as cosmic (super)string models with relatively small string tension that are favoured in some string theory models. This search for the stochastic background improves on the indirect limits from Big Bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic microwave background at 100 Hz.
引力波的随机背景预计源于大量来自天体物理和宇宙学起源的未解析引力波源的叠加。它应该携带宇宙演化最早阶段的独特特征，这是标准天体物理观测无法触及的。因此，直接测量这种背景的幅度对于理解宇宙在不到一分钟时的演化至关重要。在这里，我们报告了使用激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）两年科学运行数据对随机引力波背景幅度的限制。我们的结果将在100Hz左右频段内，经宇宙临界能量密度归一化后的随机引力波背景能量密度在95%置信度下限制为<6.9×10^(-6)。这些数据排除了具有相对较大状态方程参数的早期宇宙演化模型，以及一些弦理论模型中受青睐的具有相对小弦张力的宇宙（超）弦模型。此次对随机背景的搜索改进了在100Hz时来自大爆炸核合成和宇宙微波背景的间接限制。
