Stacking Gravitational Wave Signals from Soft Gamma Repeater Bursts

Abstract

Soft gamma repeaters (SGRs) have unique properties that make them intriguing targets for gravitational wave (GW) searches. They are nearby, their burst emission mechanism may involve neutron star crust fractures and excitation of quasi-normal modes, and they burst repeatedly and sometimes spectacularly. A recent LIGO search for transient GW from these sources placed upper limits on a set of almost 200 individual SGR bursts. These limits were within the theoretically predicted range of some models. We present a new search strategy which builds upon the method used there by "stacking" potential GW signals from multiple SGR bursts. We assume that variation in the time difference between burst electromagnetic emission and burst GW emission is small relative to the GW signal duration, and we time-align GW excess power time-frequency tilings containing individual burst triggers to their corresponding electromagnetic emissions. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we confirm that gains in GW energy sensitivity of N^{1/2} are possible, where N is the number of stacked SGR bursts. Estimated sensitivities for a mock search for gravitational waves from the 2006 March 29 storm from SGR 1900+14 are also presented, for two GW emission models, "fluence-weighted" and "flat" (unweighted).

17 pages, 16 figures, submitted to PRD

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• Black hole spectroscopy with coherent mode stacking
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Gravitational wave spectroscopy of binary neutron star merger remnants with mode stacking
• On the excitation of f-modes and torsional modes by magnetar giant flares
• Search for transient gravitational wave signals associated with magnetar bursts during Advanced LIGO's second observing run
• Detecting gravitational waves from highly eccentric compact binaries
• The detectability of eccentric compact binary coalescences with advanced gravitational-wave detectors
• Multimessenger astronomy with the Einstein Telescope
• Exploring a search for long-duration transient gravitational waves associated with magnetar bursts
• Quasi-periodic oscillations during magnetar giant flares in the strangeon star model
• SGR 1806-20 and the gravitational wave detectors EXPLORER and NAUTILUS
• Detectability of the gravitational-wave background produced by magnetar giant flares