Towards Multimessenger Pulsar Astronomy: A Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves from Fermi-LAT Unassociated Sources in LIGO S6 Data

ORAL

Abstract

Gravitational waves from rotating neutron stars are interesting sources for advanced ground-based gravitational wave detectors. Observations of these signals have the potential to advance many ongoing problems in pulsar astronomy, including the discovery of radio-quiet pulsars. I discuss ongoing work on a fully coherent directed search for continuous gravitational waves in LIGO S6 data, targeting a subset of unassociated sources from the Fermi 2FGL catalog selected by spectral characteristics and high galactic latitude. This search demonstrates a framework for using gravitational wave searches of unidentified gamma-ray objects, including sources with coarse position uncertainty, to detect new pulsars in our galaxy.

Authors

  • J.R. Sanders

    University of Michigan