2010/03/03 by Burkhard Zink, Oleg Korobkin, Erik Schnetter +1 · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astrophysics #Chandrasekhar limit #Classical mechanics #General relativity #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Gravitational wave #Instability #LIGO #Neutron star #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Stars #White dwarf #astro-ph.SR #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.81.084055
published as Phys.Rev.D81:084055,2010 · 13 pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2010/03/03 · openalex publication_date 2010/04/29 · arxiv updated 2010/11/16 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Rapidly rotating neutron stars can be unstable to the gravitational-wave-driven Chandrasekhar-Friedman-Schutz (CFS) mechanism if they have a neutral point in the spectrum of nonaxisymmetric f-modes. We investigate the frequencies of these modes in two sequences of uniformly rotating polytropes using nonlinear simulations in full general relativity, determine the approximate locations of the neutral points, and derive limits on the observable frequency band available to the instability in these sequences. We find that general relativity enhances the detectability of a CFS-unstable neutron star substantially, both by widening the instability window and enlarging the band into the optimal range for interferometric detectors like LIGO, VIRGO, and GEO-600.