Searching for a remnant of GW170817
Even though there have been many astronomical observations after GW170817, we still do not know for certain what formed after this binary neutron star merger. But a detection of gravitational waves after the merger would provide unambiguous evidence of the properties of the remnant. In this talk we focus on one of the methods that is currently being used to search for a post-merger remnant of GW170817, an adaptation of the FrequencyHough. This method searches for continuous gravitational waves—quasi-infinite, monochromatic signals with very low spindowns— by mapping points in the time/frequency plane to lines in the frequency/spindown plane. We show how we have generalized the FrequencyHough, through a simple change of coordinates, to search for signals lasting for hours/days with very high spindowns that are related to their frequencies by a power law. We discuss the parameter space explored, the construction of our search, our estimates of sensitivity, and other methods that are being used to search for a remnant of GW170817.