  The current-quadrupole gravitational-wave signal emitted during the spin-up
phase of a pulsar glitch is calculated from first principles by modeling the
vortex dynamics observed in recent Gross-Pitaevskii simulations of pinned,
decelerating quantum condensates. Homogeneous and inhomogeneous unpinning
geometries, representing creep- and avalanche-like glitches, provide lower and
upper bounds on the gravitational wave signal strength respectively. The signal
arising from homogeneous glitches is found to scale with the square root of
glitch size, whereas the signal from inhomogeneous glitches scales proportional
to glitch size. The signal is also computed as a function of vortex travel
distance and stellar angular velocity. Convenient amplitude scalings are
derived as functions of these parameters. For the typical astrophysical
situation, where the glitch duration (in units of the spin period) is large
compared to the vortex travel distance (in units of the stellar radius), an
individual glitch from an object $1\,\rm{kpc}$ from Earth generates a wave
strain of $10^{-24} [(\Delta\omega/\omega) / 10^{-7}] (\omega/10^2 \rm{rad
s}^{-1})^3 (\Delta r / 10^{-2} \rm{m})^{-1}$, where $\Delta r$ is the average
distance travelled by a vortex during a glitch, $\Delta\omega/\omega$ is the
fractional glitch size, and $\omega$ is the pulsar angular velocity. The
non-detection of a signal from the 2006 Vela glitch in data from the fifth
science run conducted by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory implies that the glitch duration exceeds $\sim 10^{-4}\,\rm{ms}$.
This represents the first observational lower bound on glitch duration to be
obtained.
