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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc, Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE
Abstract:
Continuous gravitational waves from neutron stars could provide an invaluable
resource to learn about their interior physics. A common search method involves
matched-filtering a modeled template against the noisy gravitational-wave data
to find signals. This method suffers a mismatch (i.e. relative loss of
signal-to-noise ratio) if the signal deviates from the template. One possible
instance in which this may occur is if the neutron star undergoes a glitch, a
sudden rapid increase in the rotation frequency seen in the timing of many
radio pulsars. In this work, we use a statistical characterization of glitch
rate and size in radio pulsars to estimate how often neutron star glitches
would occur within the parameter space of continuous gravitational-wave
searches, and how much mismatch putative signals would suffer in the search due
to these glitches. We find that for many previous and potential future
searches, continuous-wave signals have an elevated probability of undergoing
one or more glitches, and that these glitches will often lead to a substantial
fraction of the signal-to-noise ratio being lost. This could lead to a failure
to identify candidate gravitational wave signals in the initial stages of a
search, and also to the false dismissal of candidates in subsequent follow-up
stages.
