Rotating neutron stars as sources of gravitational waves

Marcin Kucaba, Dorota Gondek-Rosińska, Tomasz Bulik and Maciej Kamiński

Gravitational waves (GWs), predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, are oscillations of the space-time itself. GWs pass through space almost unaffected. This gives rise to the expectation that the detection of GWs may provide a different view on astrophysical processes hidden from electromagnetic astronomy. A spinning neutron star is a source of continuous GWs, if its mass distribution is non-axisymmetric along the rotation axis. It can be caused by various instabilities (Andersson, 2003; Gondek-Rosińska et al., 2003) and deformations, e.g., due to magnetic field. It is estimated that 108 neutron stars exist in our Galaxy. They are considered important sources for future GWs detectors: Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and the Einstein Telescope. Advanced LIGO will start observations in 2015.
In this contribution we report a study of the gravitational wave signal from a population of 10000 neutron stars using a realistic model of their distribution in the Galaxy. Up to now only the signal from the Crab pulsar was studied (Bonazzola & Gourgoulhon, 1996) and the simplified model of GWs signal from neutron stars population by Giazotto et al. (1997). Regimbau & de Freitas Pacheco (2000) estimated the probability of the detection of GWs from galactic radio pulsars by the 1st generation Virgo detector.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 1, 179-181 (2014)

Download full article as PDF file: