Building mountains on neutron stars

Gravitational wave astronomy is now a reality, with many black hole and neutron star binary coalescence events having been observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. Observers are also hoping to detect gravitational waves from individual spinning neutron stars. The aim of this project is to build models of how neutron stars can acquire the necessary non-axisymmetries required for such long-lived gravitational wave emission. Aspects of elasticity, superfluidity and gravity will be combined to build a maximally realistic model of such emission, which will in turn guide the efforts of the word-wide gravitational wave detection community.