English

Argus: JAX state-space filtering for gravitational wave detection with a pulsar timing array

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2025-10-14 v1

Abstract

Argus is a high-performance Python package for detecting and characterising nanohertz gravitational waves in pulsar timing array data. The package provides a complete Bayesian inference framework based on state-space models, using Kalman filtering for efficient likelihood evaluation. Argus leverages JAX for just-in-time compilation, GPU acceleration, and automatic differentiation, facilitating rapid Bayesian inference with gradient-based samplers. The state-space approach provides a computationally efficient alternative to traditional frequency-domain methods, offering linear scaling with the number of pulse times-of-arrival, and natural handling of non-stationary processes.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.11077,
  title  = {Argus: JAX state-space filtering for gravitational wave detection with a pulsar timing array},
  author = {Tom Kimpson and Nicholas J. O'Neill and Patrick M. Meyers and Andrew Melatos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.11077},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Submitted to the Journal of Open Source Software. Review at github.com/openjournals/joss-reviews/issues/9179. Repository at github.com/tomkimpson/Argus

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:33:14.610Z