In recent years, the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors have observed transient gravitational waves from catastrophic collisions of black holes and neutron stars. We also search for other sources and types of gravitational waves, like the much fainter continuous gravitational radiation emitted by non-axisymmetric spinning neutron stars. Observation of these as-yet undetected waves would provide invaluable information about the neutron stars' properties. There are computational challenges associated with searches for these faint waves that require integrating data over a long duration (on the order of years). Collaborations between gravitational-wave astrophysicists and engineering scientists have motivated innovative solutions to some of the complex problems. In this talk, I will start with an introduction to the major continuous-wave sources. Then I will give more specific examples of tackling data analysis challenges by leveraging signal processing techniques, in particular the hidden Markov model tracking.
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