Gravity Waves from Rotating Neutron Stars and Evaluation of Fast Chirp Transform Techniques

X-ray observations suggest that neutron stars in low mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) are rotating with frequencies from 300 600 Hz. These spin rates are significantly less than the break-up rates for essentially all realistic neutron star equations of state, suggesting that some process may limit the spin frequencies of accreting neutron stars to this range. If the accretion induced spin up torque is in equilibrium with gravitational radiation losses, these objects could be interesting sources of gravity waves. I present a brief summary of current measurements of neutron star spins in LMXBs based on the observations of high-Q oscillations during thermonuclear bursts (so called “burst oscillations”). Further measurements of neutron star spins will be important in exploring the gravitational radiation hypothesis in more detail. To this end I also present a study of fast chirp transform (FCT) techniques as described by Jenet & Prince (2000) in the context of searching for the chirping signals observed during X-ray bursts.