Gravity seminar: Sophie Bini, University of Trento — Search for hyperbolic encounters of compact objects in the third LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run

Since 2015, about 90 gravitational-waves (GW) events have been observed. The totality of the events originated from the coalescence of compact binary systems. As the sensitivity of the detectors improves, new astrophysical sources of GWs might emerge. For example, in dense stellar environments, black holes and neutron stars are expected to encounter following unbound orbits. These interactions would manifest as GW burst signals in the frequency band of current GW detectors. We analyse the second half of the third Advanced LIGO-Virgo observing run (O3b) using a model-informed search with the CoherentWaveBurst (cWB) pipeline. No significant event has been identified in addition to known GW events. For the first time, we assess the observable sensitivity volume achieved for hyperbolic encounters, injecting 3-PN accurate approximants, and we compare our findings with the expected event rates predicted by astrophysical models.