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Realistic sensitivity curves for pulsar timing arrays

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arxiv 1907.04341 v1 pith:5UP2UI3G submitted 2019-07-09 gr-qc astro-ph.IM

classification gr-qcastro-ph.IM
keywords curvessensitivitypulsarrealistictimingarrayexactnoise
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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We construct realistic sensitivity curves for pulsar timing array searches for gravitational waves, incorporating both red and white noise contributions to individual pulsar noise spectra, as well as the effect of fitting to a pulsar timing model. We demonstrate the method on both simulated pulsars and a realistic array consisting of a subset of NANOGrav pulsars used in recent analyses. A comparison between the results presented here and exact sensitivity curves shows agreement to tens of percent. The resulting sensitivity curves can be used to assess the detectability of predicted gravitational-wave signals in the nanohertz frequency band in a fraction of the time that it would take to compute the exact sensitivity curves.

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Forward citations

Cited by 10 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. Constraints on the Primordial Black Hole Abundance using Pulsar Parameter Drifts

    astro-ph.CO 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 8.0 of 10

    The first search for scalar-induced gravitational waves via pulsar parameter drifts yields f_PBH < 10^{-10} (95% CL) for PBH masses 0.3 to 4e4 solar masses, strongly disfavoring a primordial black hole origin for LVK ...

  2. Gravity Echoes from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

    astro-ph.HE 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 8.0 of 10

    Future microhertz detections combined with nanohertz pulsar terms can serve as gravity echoes to measure supermassive black hole binary inspiral rates from hundreds to thousands of years in the past.

  3. Probing Supermassive Black Hole Mergers with Pulsar Timing Arrays

    astro-ph.HE 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    Pulsar timing arrays can probe supermassive black hole binaries that merged prior to observations via the pulsar term, with SKA potentially detecting a few such zombie binaries at SNR > 3.

  4. New Sensitivity Curves for Gravitational-Wave Signals from Cosmological Phase Transitions

    hep-ph 2020-02 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    Defines peak-integrated sensitivity curves (PISCs) that fold in the expected spectral shape of gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions and supplies semianalytical fits plus public data for major detectors.

  5. A Joint Optimal Search for Gravitational Waves from Resolved and Unresolved Supermassive Binary Black Holes with Pulsar Timing Arrays

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    A joint model of GWB and resolvable SMBHBs for PTA data proposes N_c as astrophysical detection statistic and applies it to NANOGrav 15-year simulations, finding tensions with 21 of 114 AGN candidates and low (2-5%) d...

  6. From new physics to a running power law and back again: Minimal refitting techniques for the reconstruction of the gravitational-wave background signal in pulsar timing array data

    gr-qc 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A new refitting technique maps any gravitational-wave background spectrum onto a running-power-law reference model via sensitivity-weighted chi-squared minimization, and uses the pullback of the reference posterior to...

  7. Stochastic problems in pulsar timing

    astro-ph.HE 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Analytical solutions to Langevin equations for red noise and GWB in pulsars show that an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck spin frequency model is inconsistent with stationary signals, while an overdamped oscillator model and a two-...

  8. Cosmic Variance in Anisotropy Searches at Pulsar Timing Arrays

    astro-ph.CO 2025-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Cosmic variance does not create false anisotropy detections in pulsar timing array searches when the correct likelihood is used, and the maximum resolvable multipole scales as the number of pulsars rather than its squ...

  9. \texttt{GWBird}: a toolkit for the characterization of the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background for Ground, Space, and Pulsar Timing Array detectors

    astro-ph.IM 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A new, unified Python package computes overlap reduction functions, power-law integrated sensitivity curves, and angular sensitivity curves for ground, space, and pulsar timing array detectors across all gravitational...

  10. The SKAO Pulsar Timing Array

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 accept novelty 3.5 of 10

    An SKAO PTA with ~174 millisecond pulsars can dominate nanohertz GW sensitivity within four years and enable continuous-wave detections plus anisotropy maps of the gravitational-wave background.

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