Diving below the spin-down limit: Constraints on gravitational waves from the energetic young pulsar PSR J0537-6910
(2021) Astrophysical Journal — Vol. 913 (2021)
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- Authors
Miller, Andrew 
., Jishnu Suresh
- Abstract
- We present a search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the young, energetic X-ray pulsar PSR J0537-6910 using data from the second and third observing runs of LIGO and Virgo. The search is enabled by a contemporaneous timing ephemeris obtained using NICER data. The NICER ephemeris has also been extended through 2020 October and includes three new glitches. PSR J0537-6910 has the largest spin-down luminosity of any pulsar and is highly active with regards to glitches. Analyses of its long-term and inter-glitch braking indices provided intriguing evidence that its spin-down energy budget may include gravitational-wave emission from a time-varying mass quadrupole moment. Its 62 Hz rotation frequency also puts its possible gravitational-wave emission in the most sensitive band of LIGO/Virgo detectors. Motivated by these considerations, we search for gravitational-wave emission at both once and twice the rotation frequency. We find no signal, however, and report our upper limits. Assuming a rigidly rotating triaxial star, our constraints reach below the gravitational-wave spin-down limit for this star for the first time by more than a factor of two and limit gravitational waves from the $l=m=2$ mode to account for less than 14% of the spin-down energy budget. The fiducial equatorial ellipticity is limited to less than about 3e-5, which is the third best constraint for any young pulsar.
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Citations
Sieniawska, M., Abbott, R., Abbott, T. D., Bruno, G., De Lillo, F., Depasse, A., Miller, A., Piotrzkowski, K., Tanasijczuk, A. J., van Heijningen, J., Badaracco, F., & ., J. S. (2021). Diving below the spin-down limit: Constraints on gravitational waves from the energetic young pulsar PSR J0537-6910. Astrophysical Journal, 913. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/abffcd (Original work published 2021)