Searching gravitational waves from pulsars, using laser beam interferometers

¹ LIGO laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
² Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France

Corresponding author: T. Regimbau, tania@ligo.mit.edu

Received: 19 August 2002
Accepted: 19 December 2002

Abstract

We use recent population synthesis results to investigate the distribution of pulsars in the frequency space, having a gravitational strain high enough to be detected by the future generations of laser beam interferometers. We find that until detectors become able to recover the entire population, the frequency distribution of the “detectable” population will be very dependent on the detector noise curve. Assuming a mean equatorial deformation , the optimal frequency is around 450 Hz for interferometers of the first generation (LIGO or VIRGO) and shifts toward 85 Hz for advanced detectors. An interesting result for future detection stategies is the significant narrowing of the distribution when improving the sensitivity: with an advanced detector, it is possible to have 90% of detection probability while exploring less than 20% of the parameter space (7.5% in the case of ). In addition, we show that in most cases the spindown of 'detectable' pulsars represents a period shift of less than a tens of nanoseconds after one year of observation, making them easier to follow in the frequency space.