Measuring neutron-star ellipticity with measurements of the stochastic gravitational-wave background

Understand

Galactic neutron stars are a promising source of gravitational waves in the analysis band of detectors such as LIGO and Virgo.

• Previous searches for gravitational waves from neutron stars have focused on the detection of individual neutron stars, which are either nearby or highly non-spherical.
• Here we consider the stochastic gravitational-wave signal arising from the ensemble of Galactic neutron stars.
• Using a population synthesis model, we estimate the single-sigma sensitivity of current and planned gravitational-wave observatories to average neutron star ellipticity $\epsilon$ as a function of the number of in-band Galactic neutron stars $N_\text{tot}$.