  The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is one of a
new generation of detectors of gravitational radiation. The existence of
gravitational radiation was first predicted by Einstein in 1916, however
gravitational waves have not yet been directly observed. One source of
gravitation radiation is binary inspiral. Two compact bodies orbiting each
other, such as a pair of black holes, lose energy to gravitational radiation.
As the system loses energy the bodies spiral towards each other. This causes
their orbital speed and the amount of gravitational radiation to increase,
producing a characteristic ``chirp'' waveform in the LIGO sensitive band. In
this thesis, matched filtering of LIGO science data is used to search for low
mass binary systems in the halo of dark matter surrounding the Milky Way.
Observations of gravitational microlensing events of stars in the Large
Magellanic Cloud suggest that some fraction of the dark matter in the halo may
be in the form of Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs). It has
been proposed that low mass black holes formed in the early universe may be a
component of the MACHO population; some fraction of these black hole MACHOs
will be in binary systems and detectable by LIGO. The inspiral from a MACHO
binary composed of two 0.5 solar mass black holes enters the LIGO sensitive
band around 40 Hz. The chirp signal increases in amplitude and frequency,
sweeping through the sensitive band to 4400 Hz in 140 seconds. By using
evidence from microlensing events and theoretical predictions of the population
an upper limit is placed on the rate of black hole MACHO inspirals in the
galactic halo.
