Transient gravitational waves from pulsar post-glitch recoveries

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential detection of gravitational waves generated by transient neutron star mountains formed after pulsar glitches, highlighting the prospects with current and future GW detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking neutron star glitch recoveries to transient gravitational wave emissions, providing analytical expressions for GW amplitude and duration based on observables.

Findings

GWs from transient mountains are marginally detectable with Advanced LIGO.

Detection likelihood increases significantly with third-generation detectors like the Einstein Telescope.

Analytical formulas relate GW signals to observable parameters.

Abstract

This work explores whether gravitational waves (GWs) from neutron star (NS) mountains can be detected with current 2nd-generation and future 3rd-generation GW detectors. In particular, we focus on a scenario where transient mountains are formed immediately after a NS glitch. In a glitch, a NS's spin frequency abruptly increases and then often exponentially recovers back to, but never quite reaches, the spin frequency prior to the glitch. If the recovery is ascribed to an additional torque due to a transient mountain, we find that GWs from that mountain are marginally-detectable with Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity and is very likely to be detectable for 3rd-generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope. Using this model, we are able to find analytical expressions for the GW amplitude and its duration in terms of observables.