Accretion-induced spin-wandering effects on the neutron star in Scorpius X-1: Implications for continuous gravitational wave searches

Understand

The LIGO's discovery of binary black hole mergers has opened up a new era of transient gravitational wave astronomy.

• The potential detection of gravitational radiation from another class of astronomical objects, rapidly spinning non-axisymmetric neutron stars, would constitute a new area of gravitational wave astronomy.
• Scorpius X-1 (Sco X-1) is one of the most promising sources of continuous gravitational radiation to be detected with present-generation ground-based gravitational wave detectors, such as Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo.
• As the sensitivity of these detectors improve in the coming years, so will power of the search algorithms being used to find gravitational wave signals.