Special Astrophysics Seminar

Accreting millisecond pulsars as sources of gravitational waves... and more

Christine Chung

University of Melbourne

Accreting millisecond pulsars are promising candidates in the search for gravitational waves. One possible way in which they could generate gravitational waves is through free precession. In this talk, I will detail our search for evidence of precession in X-ray timing data of XTE J1814-338. I will present upper limits on the ellipticity and gravitational wave strain from this pulsar inferred from comparing the data to a theoretical model. I will also describe how the radiometer (cross-correlation) search method, commonly used in radio pulsar searches, will be used to search for periodic gravitational waves from millisecond pulsars in data from the LIGO detectors.