The continuous gravitational wave treasure trove of dark neutron stars

Of the estimated >~ 100 million galactic neutron stars, only ~3500 have been detected, mostly as pulsars with EM observations. A large fraction is hidden from EM observations since they are non-pulsating, their beam does not strike Earth or is occluded.

Some of these invisible neutron stars could be detected via another channel: tiny deformations/deviations from rotational symmetry in the neutron star continuously emitting gravitational waves, omnidirectional and passing unobstructed through material.

Searches for these still elusive continuous gravitational waves can be computationally challenging, depending on how well we know the system parameters. We present an ongoing search to detect continuous gravitational waves from non-visible candidate neutron stars in eccentric binary systems identified in GAIA data.

This type of search serves as a blueprint for probing gravitational wave emission from neutron stars in binaries with parameters affected by large uncertainties.