An all-sky search algorithm for continuous gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars in binary systems

Abstract

Rapidly spinning neutron stars with non-axisymmetric mass distributions are expected to generate quasi-monochromatic continuous gravitational waves. While many searches for unknown, isolated spinning neutron stars have been carried out, there have been no previous searches for unknown sources in binary systems. Since current search methods for unknown, isolated neutron stars are already computationally limited, expanding the parameter space searched to include binary systems is a formidable challenge. We present a new hierarchical binary search method called TwoSpect, which exploits the periodic orbital modulations of the continuous waves by searching for patterns in doubly Fourier-transformed data. We will describe the TwoSpect search pipeline, including its mitigation of detector noise variations and corrections for Doppler frequency modulation caused by changing detector velocity. Tests on Gaussian noise and on a set of simulated signals will be presented.