A STUDY OF THE GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE FORM FROM PULSARS

We present a study of the gravitational wave form from pulsars. Typica lly the observation times will be of the order of a few months. Due to the rotation and orbital motion of the Earth, a monochromatic signal becomes frequency and amplitude modulated. The effect of both these mo dulations is to smear out the monochromatic signal into a small bandwi dth about the signal frequency of the wave. However, the effect on the Fourier transform of the frequency modulation is much more severe com pared to the amplitude modulation in that the height of the peak is re duced drastically. The Fourier transform of the pulsar signal, taking into account the rotation of the Earth for one day observation period is studied. We have obtained an analytical closed form of the Fourier transform considering the rotational motion of the Earth only. With th e inclusion of orbital corrections one obtains a double series of Bess el functions.