2004/06/10 by D. I. Jones · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Seismic Waves and Analysis #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.70.042002
published as Phys.Rev. D70 (2004) 042002 · 9 pages; 2 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev. D
arxiv created 2004/06/10 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this paper we ask whether the phenomenon of timing noise long known in electromagnetic pulsar astronomy is likely to be important in gravitational wave (GW) observations of spinning-down neutron stars. We find that timing noise is strong enough to be of importance only in the young pulsars, which must have larger triaxialities than theory predicts for their GW emission to be detectable. However, assuming that their GW emission is detectable, we list the pulsars for which timing noise is important, either because it is strong enough that its neglect by the observer would render the source undetectable or else because it is a measurable feature of the GW signal. We also find that timing noise places a limit on the observation duration of a coherent blind GW search, and suggest that hierarchical search techniques might be able to cope with this problem. Demonstration of the presence or absence of timing noise in the GW channel would give a new probe of neutron star physics.