Gravitational waves from rapidly rotating neutron stars

Rapidly rotating neutron stars in Low Mass X-ray Binaries have been proposed as an interesting source of gravitational waves. In this chapter we present estimates of the gravitational wave emission for various scenarios, given the (electromagnetically) observed characteristics of these systems. First of all we focus on the r-mode instability and show that a “minimal” neutron star model (which does not incorporate exotica in the core, dynamically important magnetic fields or superfluid degrees of freedom), is not consistent with observations.We then present estimates of both thermally induced and magnetically sustained mountains in the crust. In general magnetic mountains are likely to be detectable only if the buried magnetic field of the star is of the order of B ≈ 10¹² G. In the thermal mountain case we find that gravitational wave emission from persistent systems may be detected by ground based interferometers. Finally we re-asses the idea that gravitational wave emission may be balancing the accretion torque in these systems, and show that in most cases the disc/magnetosphere interaction can account for the observed spin periods.