Progress Towards a Pipeline for Continuous Gravitational Wave Searches in Pulsar Timing Data

Details Progress Towards a Pipeline for Continuous Gravitational Wave Searches in Pulsar Timing Data Progress Towards a Pipeline for Continuous Gravitational Wave Searches in Pulsar Timing Data

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21713903e&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #139.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Gravitational Waves (GWs) are tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Einstein's General Relativity. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are well poised to detect low frequency (10-9 - 10-7 Hz) GWs in the near future. There has been a significant amount of research into the detection of a stochastic background of GWs from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). Recent work (Sesana et al 2010) has shown that single continuous sources standing out above the background may be detectable by PTAs operating at a sensitivity sufficient to detect the stochastic background. The main source of continuous GWs in the pulsar timing frequency band are extremely massive and/or nearby SMBHs. Here we present progress towards a fully functional pipeline for continuous GW searches in pulsar timing data. This pipeline is based on a frequentist approach that relies on a matched filtering search of constructed template banks. We present methods for determining the optimal grid size in template space that maximizes the likelihood of detection and characterization of a given GW source. We also report progress on implementation of this pipeline into the TEMPO2 pulsar timing software package, in which the gravitational wave signal will be fit for in the pulsar timing residuals using a least squares fitting routine. This pipeline is versatile in that it can also be used for binary system parameter estimation and upper limit calculations on possible sources.

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