Searching for gravitational waves from known pulsars

TL;DR

This paper reports upper limits on gravitational wave emissions from 28 known pulsars using LIGO data, introduces a new method for presenting ellipticity constraints considering uncertainties, and extends searches to pulsars in binary systems.

Contribution

It provides the first set of ellipticity upper limits accounting for moment of inertia uncertainties and expands search methods to binary pulsars.

Findings

Upper limits set on gravitational wave amplitudes from 28 pulsars.

A new presentation method for ellipticity upper limits considering moment of inertia uncertainties.

Extended search techniques to include pulsars in binary systems.

Abstract

We present upper limits on the amplitude of gravitational waves from 28 isolated pulsars using data from the second science run of LIGO. The results are also expressed as a constraint on the pulsars' equatorial ellipticities. We discuss a new way of presenting such ellipticity upper limits that takes account of the uncertainties of the pulsar moment of inertia. We also extend our previous method to search for known pulsars in binary systems, of which there are about 80 in the sensitive frequency range of LIGO and GEO 600.