Gravitational waves from hot young rapidly rotating neutron stars

Owen, Benjamin J., Lindblom, Lee, Cutler, Curt, Schutz, Bernard F., Vecchio, Alberto and Andersson, Nils (1998) Gravitational waves from hot young rapidly rotating neutron stars. Physical Review D, 58 (8), 084020-[15pp]. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.58.084020).

Abstract

Gravitational radiation drives an instability in the r-modes of young rapidly rotating neutron stars. This instability is expected to carry away most of the angular momentum of the star by gravitational radiation emission, leaving a star rotating at about 100 Hz. In this paper we model in a simple way the development of the instability and evolution of the neutron star during the year-long spindown phase. This allows us to predict the general features of the resulting gravitational waveform. We show that a neutron star formed in the Virgo cluster could be detected by the LIGO and VIRGO gravitational wave detectors when they reach their “enhanced” level of sensitivity, with an amplitude signal-to-noise ratio that could be as large as about 8 if near-optimal data analysis techniques are developed. We also analyze the stochastic background of gravitational waves produced by the r-mode radiation from neutron-star formation throughout the universe. Assuming a substantial fraction of neutron stars are born with spin frequencies near their maximum values, this stochastic background is shown to have an energy density of about 10-9 of the cosmological closure density, in the range 20 Hz to 1 kHz. This radiation should be detectable by “advanced” LIGO as well.

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Contributors

Author: Nils Andersson

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