Searching for gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A with LIGO

Wette, K. and Owen, B. J. and Allen, B. and Ashley, M. and Betzwieser, J. and Christensen, N. and Creighton, T. D. and Dergachev, V. and Gholami, I. and Goetz, E. and Gustafson, R. and Hammer, D. and Jones, D. I. and Krishnan, B. and Landry, M. and Machenschalk, B. and McClelland, D. E. and Mendell, G. and Messenger, C. J. and Papa, M. A. and Patel, P. and Pitkin, M. and Pletsch, H. J. and Prix, R. and Riles, K. and Sancho de la Jordana, L. and Scott, S. M. and Sintes, A. M. and Trias, M. and Whelan, J. T. and Woan, G. (2008) Searching for gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A with LIGO. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 25 (23): 235011. ISSN 0264-9381

Abstract

We describe a search underway for periodic gravitational waves from the central compact object in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. The object is the youngest likely neutron star in the Galaxy. Its position is well known, but the object does not pulse in any electromagnetic radiation band and thus presents a challenge in searching the parameter space of frequency and frequency derivatives. We estimate that a fully coherent search can, with a reasonable amount of time on a computing cluster, achieve a sensitivity at which it is theoretically possible (though not likely) to observe a signal even with the initial LIGO noise spectrum. Cassiopeia A is only the second object after the Crab pulsar for which this is true. The search method described here can also obtain interesting results for similar objects with current LIGO sensitivity.