Transient gravitational waves from pulsar post-glitch recoveries

Understand

This work explores whether gravitational waves (GWs) from neutron star (NS) mountains can be detected with current 2nd-generation and future 3rd-generation GW detectors.

• In particular, we focus on a scenario where transient mountains are formed immediately after a NS glitch.
• In a glitch, a NS's spin frequency abruptly increases and then often exponentially recovers back to, but never quite reaches, the spin frequency prior to the glitch.
• If the recovery is ascribed to an additional torque due to a transient mountain, we find that GWs from that mountain are marginally-detectable with Advanced LIGO at design sensitivity and is very likely to be detectable for 3rd-generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope.