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On measuring the gravitational-wave background using Pulsar Timing Arrays
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Long-term precise timing of Galactic millisecond pulsars holds great promise for measuring the long-period (months-to-years) astrophysical gravitational waves. Several gravitational-wave observational programs, called Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA), are being pursued around the world. Here we develop a Bayesian algorithm for measuring the stochastic gravitational-wave background (GWB) from the PTA data. Our algorithm has several strengths: (1) It analyses the data without any loss of information, (2) It trivially removes systematic errors of known functional form, including quadratic pulsar spin-down, annual modulations and jumps due to a change of equipment, (3) It measures simultaneously both the amplitude and the slope of the GWB spectrum, (4) It can deal with unevenly sampled data and coloured pulsar noise spectra. We sample the likelihood function using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulations. We extensively test our approach on mock PTA datasets, and find that the algorithm has significant benefits over currently proposed counterparts. We show the importance of characterising all red noise components in pulsar timing noise by demonstrating that the presence of a red component would significantly hinder a detection of the GWB. Lastly, we explore the dependence of the signal-to-noise ratio on the duration of the experiment, number of monitored pulsars, and the magnitude of the pulsar timing noise. These parameter studies will help formulate observing strategies for the PTA experiments.
Forward citations
Cited by 7 Pith papers
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A new framework for lightning-fast gravitational wave analysis of pulsar timing data
A standardizing coordinate transform turns PTA Fourier coefficients into near-standard normals so HMC/NUTS on GPU recovers NANOGrav-scale posteriors in ~15 minutes.
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Beyond diagonal approximations: improved covariance modeling for pulsar timing array data analysis
A new FFT-and-interpolation covariance method for pulsar timing arrays avoids the biased parameters produced by the standard diagonal Fourier-space approximation.
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A Joint Optimal Search for Gravitational Waves from Resolved and Unresolved Supermassive Binary Black Holes with Pulsar Timing Arrays
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...
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Finding Supermassive Black Hole Binary Mergers in Pulsar Timing Array Data
A complete SMBHB waveform model enables unified PTA searches for mergers and memory signals, with parameter recovery shown on simulated data for 10^8-10^10 solar mass systems.
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Mitigating cosmic variance in the Hellings-Downs curve: a Cosmic Microwave Background analogy
An optimal multipole-space frequency weighting shows that PTA cosmic variance can be reduced with longer observations and better cadence, and the CMB would show a Hellings-Downs curve only if n_T>4.
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Searches for signatures of ultra-light axion dark matter in polarimetry data of the European Pulsar Timing Array
Analysis of EPTA pulsar polarimetry finds no evidence for ultra-light axion dark matter, sets upper limits on the axion-photon coupling, and attributes a common 2-year-period signal to ionospheric Faraday rotation.
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Evaluating the Fourier Approximation in Pulsar Timing Array Analysis
The Fourier approximation in PTA analysis for power-law PSDs produces marginal likelihoods roughly twice as large as more accurate calculations, but the key comparison between uncorrelated and Hellings-Downs correlate...
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