Gravitational Radiation from the Milky Way -- Searching for Continuous Waves from Spinning Neutron Stars

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The recent discoveries of gravitational waves from colliding black holes and from colliding neutron stars marked key milestones in science, simultaneously confirming fundamental predictions of Einstein's General Relativity, while opening up an entirely new field of astronomy. The detection of continuous gravitational waves from rotating galactic neutron stars will mark another major milestone because such sources are expected to continue emitting for long durations, allowing follow-up investigation of increasing precision,including correlation with potential signals in the radio, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray bands. Combining these gravitational and electromagnetic signals will provide critical insight into the poorly known structure of these exotic stars. The research to be carried out, on both the instrumental and analytical sides, will provide training to undergraduate and graduate students in state-of-the-art science at the frontier of knowledge.Research will focus on a number of specific areas related to the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Advanced LIGO) Experiment: 1) searches for continuous gravitational waves using methods developed originally by the Michigan group; 2) pioneering new search methods that probe more deeply and computationally more efficiently potential sources of continuous gravitational waves in binary stellar systems; and 3) detector characterization of Advanced LIGO interferometers focused on spectralline identification and mitigation, in order to improve searches for nearly monochromatic continuous gravitational waves.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.