Gravitational Waves from Compact Objects

This thesis addresses problems in the generation and detection of gravitational waves from two types of sources: inspiraling compact binaries and rapidly rotating young neutron stars. Chapters 2 and 3 estimate the computational costs of a basic matched filtering strategy to search for inspiraling compact binaries. Chapter 2 (written in 1995) sets up the machinery for calculating costs and makes a rough estimate based on the waveforms and noise spectra available at the time. It also systematizes previously published methods of choosing the filters. Chapter 3 (written with B. S. Sathyapra­ kash in 1998) fine-tunes the machinery and updates the estimates of Chapter 2 using more current waveforms and noise spectra. Chapter 4 (written with Hideyuki Tagoshi and Akira Ohashi) concerns the post­ Newtonian generation of gravitational waveforms from inspiraling compact binaries whose component objects spin about their own axes. It lays out a method of cal­ culating post-Newtonian spin effects and calculates the lowest-order such effect not previously known (the second-post-Newtonian spin-orbit contribution to the wave­ forms in the absence of precession). Chapters 5 and 6 concern the Chandrasekhar-Friedman-Schutz (CFS) gravita­tional radiation instability as it applies to the τ-modes of rapidly rotating young neutron stars. Chapter 5 (written with Lee Lindblom and Sharon M. Morsink) com­ putes the viscous damping and gravitational radiation timescales of the τ-modes and shows that viscosity does not suppress the CFS instability in hot young neutron stars. Chapter 6 (written with Lee Lindblom, Curt Cutler, Bernard F. Schutz, Alberto Vec­chio, and Nils Andersson) computes approximate gravitational waveforms from young neutron stars spinning down due to the τ-mode instability and estimates that these gravitational waves can be detected by the "enhanced" LIGO interferometers if a suitable data analysis strategy is developed.