Realistic Sensitivity Curves For Pulsar Timing Arrays

Authors

J. S. Hazboun
J. D. Romano
Tristan L. Smith, Swarthmore CollegeFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-15-2019

Published In

Physical Review D

Abstract

We construct realistic sensitivity curves for pulsar timing array searches for gravitational waves, incorporating both red and white noise contributions to individual pulsar noise spectra, and the effect of fitting to a pulsar timing model. We demonstrate the method on both simulated pulsars and a realistic array consisting of a subset of NANOGrav pulsars used in recent analyses. A comparison between the results presented here and measured upper limit curves from actual analyses shows agreement to tens of percent. The resulting sensitivity curves can be used to assess the detectability of predicted gravitational-wave signals in the nanohertz frequency band in a coherent, flexible, and computationally efficient manner.

Comments

This work is freely available courtesy of the American Physical Society.

Recommended Citation

J. S. Hazboun, J. D. Romano, and Tristan L. Smith. (2019). "Realistic Sensitivity Curves For Pulsar Timing Arrays". Physical Review D. Volume 100, Issue 10. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.100.104028
https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics/376