Is timing noise important in the gravitational wave detection of neutron stars?

Abstract

In this paper we ask whether the phenomenon of timing noise long known in electromagnetic pulsar astronomy is likely to be important in gravitational wave (GW) observations of spinning-down neutron stars. We find that timing noise is strong enough to be of importance only in the young pulsars, which must have larger triaxialities than theory predicts for their GW emission to be detectable. However, assuming that their GW emission is detectable, we list the pulsars for which timing noise is important, either because it is strong enough that its neglect by the observer would render the source undetectable, or else because it is a measurable feature of the GW signal. We also find that timing noise places a limit on the observation duration of a coherent blind GW search, and suggest that hierarchical search techniques might be able to cope with this problem. Demonstration of the presence or absence of timing noise in the GW channel would give a new probe of neutron star physics.

9 pages; 2 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (2)

• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: III. Young pulsars & the discovery and timing of 200 pulsars
• LISA, binary stars, and the mass of the graviton

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Gravitational waves from neutron stars: Promises and challenges
• Upper limits on gravitational wave emission from 78 radio pulsars
• Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015-2017 LIGO Data
• Statistical characterization of pulsar glitches and their potential impact on searches for continuous gravitational waves
• Prospects of observing continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars
• The effect of timing noise on targeted and narrow-band coherent searches for continuous gravitational waves from pulsars
• First searches for gravitational waves from r-modes of the Crab pulsar
• Search for continuous gravitational waves from ten H.E.S.S. sources using a hidden Markov model
• A semicoherent glitch-robust continuous gravitational wave search
• Binary system delays and timing noise in searches for gravitational waves from known pulsars
• Wave-optical effects in the microlensing of continuous gravitational waves by star clusters