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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
In this paper we design a search for continuous gravitational waves from
three supernova remnants: Vela Jr., Cassiopeia A (Cas A) and G347.3. These
systems might harbor rapidly rotating neutron stars emitting quasi-periodic
gravitational radiation detectable by the advanced LIGO detectors. Our search
is designed to use the volunteer computing project Einstein@Home for a few
months and assumes the sensitivity and duty cycles of the advanced LIGO
detectors during their first science run. For all three supernova remnants, the
sky-positions of their central compact objects are well known but the frequency
and spin-down rates of the neutron stars are unknown which makes the searches
computationally limited. In a previous paper we have proposed a general
framework for deciding on what target we should spend computational resources
and in what proportion, what frequency and spin-down ranges we should search
for every target, and with what search set-up. Here we further expand this
framework and apply it to design a search directed at detecting continuous
gravitational wave signals from the most promising three supernova remnants
identified as such in the previous work. Our optimization procedure yields
broad frequency and spin-down searches for all three objects, at an
unprecedented level of sensitivity: The smallest detectable gravitational wave
strain $h_0$ for Cas A is expected to be 2 times smaller than the most
sensitive upper-limits published to date, and our proposed search, which was
set-up and ran on the volunteer computing project Einstein@Home, covers a much
larger frequency range.
