Modeling Gravitational Wave Emission from Soft Gamma Repeaters

Soft gamma repeaters and anomalous x-ray pulsars are thought to be magnetars: neutron stars with extreme magnetic fields. When active they sporadically emit sudden bursts of soft gamma rays. The majority of these bursts have total energies of $10^{42}$~erg or less (isotropic), but three ``giant flares'' have had measured energies between $10^{45}$ and $10^{47}$ ergs. We perform 3D, fully general relativistic hydrodynamics simulations to model the gravitational wave (GW) emission due to global neutron star pulsational modes that may be excited during a burst. We discuss the relevant parameter space and connect our results to recent searches for GW from magnetars performed by the interferometric GW observatories.