# Characterizing the sensitivity of isolated continuous gravitational wave searches to binary orbits

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how continuous gravitational wave searches for isolated neutron stars are affected by binary orbital companions, revealing the parameter ranges where signals remain detectable despite orbital phase modulations.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the sensitivity loss in CW searches due to binary orbits and constrains the binary parameters that still allow signal detection in isolated searches.

## Key findings

- Binary orbital parameters can significantly reduce CW signal detectability.
- Certain binary configurations still allow signals to be detected in isolated searches.
- The study narrows down the parameter space for binary systems detectable with current methods.

## Abstract

Broadband all-sky searches for continuous gravitational waves (CW) from isolated neutron stars typically yield a number of significant candidates that are discarded through hierarchical semi-coherent and coherent follow-up searches. However, these searches target purely isolated sources and do not take into account possible phase modulations to the signals due to companion objects in binary orbits. If the source object is in a binary orbit, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a signal will diminish due to the mismatch between the signal waveform and the template waveform used in the search. In this paper, we investigate the sensitivity of CW searches to signals from sources in binary systems over an exhaustive range of binary orbits. We use Monte-Carlo simulations to constrain the ranges of binary orbital parameters that leave a CW signal from a source in a binary orbit visible in a search for signals from an isolated source (isolated searches), and consequently tighten the parameter space explorable with dedicated searches for signals from sources in binary systems (binary searches).