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Searching for gravitational waves in pulsar timing array data is computationally intensive. The data is unevenly sampled, and the noise is heteroscedastic, necessitating the use of a time-domain likelihood function with attendant expensive…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-06-22 Bence Bécsy , Neil J. Cornish , Matthew C. Digman

Pulsar timing is a promising technique for detecting low frequency sources of gravitational waves. Historically the focus has been on the detection of diffuse stochastic backgrounds, such as those formed from the superposition of weak…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2010-08-18 Vincent Corbin , Neil J. Cornish

Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments have entered a new era with evidence for a nanoHertz gravitational wave background (GWB). This review describes the physics of detection, detailing the noise models and cross-correlation techniques…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-01 C. M. F. Mingarelli , J. A. Casey-Clyde , Y. T. Chang , E. Eisenberg , F. Hutchison , N. Khusid , B. Larsen , A. Moran , F. Semenzato , L. Willson , Q. Zheng

Pulsar timing array projects measure the pulse arrival times of millisecond pulsars for the primary purpose of detecting nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves. The measurements include contributions from a number of astrophysical and…

After large galaxies merge, their central supermassive black holes are expected to form binary systems whose orbital motion generates a gravitational wave background (GWB) at nanohertz frequencies. Searches for this background utilize…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-04-12 M. Ajello , W. B. Atwood , L. Baldini , J. Ballet , G. Barbiellini , D. Bastieri , R. Bellazzini , A. Berretta , B. Bhattacharyya , E. Bissaldi , R. D. Blandford , E. Bloom , R. Bonino , P. Bruel , R. Buehler , E. Burns , S. Buson , R. A. Cameron , P. A. Caraveo , E. Cavazzuti , N. Cibrario , S. Ciprini , C. J. Clark , I. Cognard , J. Coronado-Blázquez , M. Crnogorcevic , H. Cromartie , K. Crowter , S. Cutini , F. D'Ammando , S. D. Gaetano , F. d. Palma , S. W. Digel , N. D. Lalla , F. Fan. Dirirsa , L. D. Venere , A. Domínguez , E. C. Ferrara , A. Fiori , A. Franckowiak , Y. Fukazawa , S. Funk , P. Fusco , V. Gammaldi , F. Gargano , D. Gasparrini , N. Giglietto , F. Giordano , M. Giroletti , D. Green , I. A. Grenier , L. Guillemot , S. Guiriec , M. Gustafsson , A. K. Harding , E. Hays , J. W. Hewitt , D. Horan , X. Hou , G. Jóhannesson , M. J. Keith , M. Kerr , M. Kramer , M. Kuss , S. Larsson , L. Latronico , J. Li , F. Longo , F. Loparco , M. N. Lovellette , P. Lubrano , S. Maldera , A. Manfreda , G. Martí-Devesa , M. N. Mazziotta , I. Mereu , P. F. Michelson , N. Mirabal , W. Mitthumsiri , T. Mizuno , M. E. Monzani , A. Morselli , M. Negro , L. Nieder , R. Ojha , N. Omodei , M. Orienti , E. Orlando , J. F. Ormes , D. Paneque , A. Parthasarathy , Z. Pei , M. Persic , M. Pesce-Rollins , R. Pillera , H. Poon , T. A. Porter , G. Principe , J. L. Racusin , S. Rainò , R. Rando , B. Rani , S. M. Ransom , P. S. Ray , M. Razzano , S. Razzaque , A. Reimer , O. Reimer , J. Roy , M. Sánchez-Conde , P. M. Sa. Parkinson , J. Scargle , L. Scotton , D. Serini , C. Sgrò , E. J. Siskind , D. A. Smith , G. Spandre , R. Spiewak , P. Spinelli , I. Stairs , D. J. Suson , S. J. Swihart , S. Tabassum , J. B. Thayer , G. Theureau , D. F. Torres , E. Troja , J. Valverde , Z. Wadiasingh , K. Wood , G. Zaharijas

Pulsar Timing Arrays have recently reported strong evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background. In standard analyses, it is modeled through pulsar-dependent Fourier coefficients assumed to follow gaussian statistics, so that the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-03-16 Adrien Kuntz , Clemente Smarra , Massimo Vaglio

Incredible progress on the theoretical uncertainty of the spatial correlations of the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background were recently made. However, it remains to realize the impact of this theoretical uncertainty on PTA cross…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-08-16 Reginald Christian Bernardo , Kin-Wang Ng

A gravitational-wave background can be detected in pulsar-timing-array data as Hellings--Downs correlations among the timing residuals measured for different pulsars. The optimal statistic implements this concept as a classical…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-02-14 Michele Vallisneri , Patrick M. Meyers , Katerina Chatziioannou , Alvin J. K. Chua

We consider the effects of relaxing the assumption that gravitational waves composing the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) are uncorrelated between frequencies in analyses of the data from Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs). While…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-01-30 Wayne Hu , Qiuyue Liang , Meng-Xiang Lin , Mark Trodden

Bayesian inference of nanohertz gravitational-wave background models in pulsar timing array analyses often relies on Gaussian-process interpolators to avoid repeated, computationally expensive strain-spectrum calculations. However,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-16 Shreyas Tiruvaskar , Chris Gordon

In this work we review the application of the theory of Gaussian processes to the modeling of noise in pulsar-timing data analysis, and we derive various useful and optimized representations for the likelihood expressions that are needed in…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2014-11-19 Rutger van Haasteren , Michele Vallisneri

The detection of nanoHertz gravitational waves through pulsar timing arrays hinges on identifying a common stochastic process affecting all pulsars in a correlated way across the sky. In the presence of other deterministic and stochastic…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-02-14 Patrick M. Meyers , Katerina Chatziioannou , Michele Vallisneri , Alvin J. K. Chua

We present the results of simulated injections testing the first Bayesian search-pipeline capable of investigating the angular-structure of a gravitational-wave (GW) background influencing pulsar signals. A stochastic background of GWs from…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2013-10-30 Stephen R. Taylor , Jonathan R. Gair

Finding and characterizing gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries is a central goal of pulsar timing array experiments, which will require analysis methods that can be efficient on our rapidly growing datasets.…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-10-28 Bence Bécsy

The characterization of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) with pulsar-timing arrays requires a continual expansion of datasets and monitored pulsars. Whereas detection of the stochastic GW background is predicated on measuring a…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-05-11 Stephen R. Taylor , Joseph Simon , Levi Schult , Nihan Pol , William G. Lamb

Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs), such as those produced by supermassive binary black holes at subparsec separations. The incoherent superposition of GWs emitted by a cosmological population of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-05 Shashwat C. Sardesai , Gabriel E. Freedman , Sarah J. Vigeland , Caitlin A. Witt

In Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) data analysis, noise is typically assumed to be Gaussian, and the marginalized likelihood has a well-established analytical form derived within the framework of Gaussian processes. However, this Gaussianity…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-30 Mikel Falxa , Alberto Sesana

The sensitivity of Pulsar Timing Arrays to gravitational waves depends on the noise present in the individual pulsar timing data. Noise may be either intrinsic or extrinsic to the pulsar. Intrinsic sources of noise will include rotational…

Gravitational waves provide a new probe of the Universe which can reveal a number of cosmological and astrophysical phenomena that cannot be observed by electromagnetic waves. Different frequencies of gravitational waves are detected by…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2021-11-08 Jun'ichi Yokoyama

Analysis of high-precision timing observations of an array of approx. 20 millisecond pulsars (a so-called "timing array") may ultimately result in the detection of a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The feasibility of such a…