English

Gravitational Wave Timing Array

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2022-07-25 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

We describe the design of a gravitational wave timing array, a novel scheme that can be used to search for low-frequency gravitational waves by monitoring continuous gravitational waves at higher frequencies. We show that observations of gravitational waves produced by Galactic binaries using a space-based detector like LISA provide sensitivity in the nanohertz to microhertz band. While the expected sensitivity of this proposal is not competitive with other methods, it fills a gap in frequency space around the microhertz regime, which is above the range probed by current pulsar timing arrays and below the expected direct frequency coverage of LISA. The low-frequency extension of sensitivity does not require any experimental design change to space-based gravitational wave detectors, and can be achieved with the data products that would already be collected by them.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.02788,
  title  = {Gravitational Wave Timing Array},
  author = {María José Bustamante-Rosell and Joel Meyers and Noah Pearson and Cynthia Trendafilova and Aaron Zimmerman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.02788},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

18 pages, 6 figures, comments welcome. Matches version accepted for publication in PhysRevD

R2 v1 2026-06-24T03:56:33.012Z