Special Astrophysics Seminar

Gravitational radiation from the pulsar glitch recovery phase

Mark Bennett

University of Melbourne

Pulsar glitches are a potential source of gravitational waves. Nonaxisymmetric vortex rearrangement during a glitch and meridional circulation inside the neutron star throughout the post-glitch recovery phase emits gravitational radiation. We focus on the latter and derive the spin up flow throughout the neutron interior using a simple hydrodynamical model. The resulting gravitational wave signal depends sensitively on the properties of the neutron star interior. The signal-to-noise ratio for a coherent search suggests that the largest glitches may be detectable by future generation laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors. Furthermore, the compressibility and viscosity of the interior matter, as well as the stratification length-scale and inclination angle of the star, can be inferred in principle from a gravitational wave detection. These properties have been measured in terrestrial heavy-ion colliders but not in the many-body, low-energy regime found in neutron stars.