  We analyzed the available LIGO data coincident with GRB 070201, a short
duration hard spectrum gamma-ray burst whose electromagnetically determined sky
position is coincident with the spiral arms of the Andromeda galaxy (M31).
Possible progenitors of such short hard GRBs include mergers of neutron stars
or a neutron star and black hole, or soft gamma-ray repeater (SGR) flares.
These events can be accompanied by gravitational-wave emission. No plausible
gravitational wave candidates were found within a 180 s long window around the
time of GRB 070201. This result implies that a compact binary progenitor of GRB
070201, with masses in the range 1 M_sun < m_1 < 3 M_sun and 1 M_sun < m_2 < 40
M_sun, located in M31 is excluded at >99% confidence. Indeed, if GRB 070201
were caused by a binary neutron star merger, we find that D < 3.5 Mpc is
excluded, assuming random inclination, at 90% confidence. The result also
implies that an unmodeled gravitational wave burst from GRB 070201 most
probably emitted less than 4.4 x 10^(-4) M_sun c^2 (7.9 x 10^(50) ergs) in any
100 ms long period within the signal region if the source was in M31 and
radiated isotropically at the same frequency as LIGO's peak sensitivity (f ~
150 Hz). This upper limit does not exclude current models of SGRs at the M31
distance.
