Continuous Gravitational Waves in LIGO Data

Continuous gravitational waves (CWs) from rotating neutron stars fall within the sensitive frequency band of the Advanced LIGO detectors. These signals are long-duration, nearly monochromatic signals that are extremely weak. Their detection benefits from targeted searches that focus on known pulsars with accurately measured sky positions and rotational parameters. This enables fully coherent analyses over long observation spans using both frequentist and Bayesian frameworks. The methods developed in this work have been applied to newly discovered, fast-spinning pulsars—including those in binary systems—and continue to support ongoing targeted CW searches in the ground-based detection domain.