Forecasting the sensitivity of Pulsar Timing Arrays to gravitational wave backgrounds

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Babak, Stanislav, Falxa, Mikel, Franciolini, Gabriele, Pieroni, Mauro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Babak, Stanislav
Falxa, Mikel
Franciolini, Gabriele
Pieroni, Mauro
author_facet Babak, Stanislav
Falxa, Mikel
Franciolini, Gabriele
Pieroni, Mauro
contents Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) observations hinted towards the existence of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the nHz frequency band. Still, the nature of the SGWB signal cannot be confidently inferred from current data, and the leading explanation invokes mergers of supermassive black holes. If confirmed, such discovery would not only represent a turning point in our understanding of astrophysics, but it may severely limit the capability of searching for additional cosmological sources in the nHz frequency range. In this work, we build a simple framework to forecast the sensitivity of future PTA configurations and assess the parameter estimation of SGWB, which could consist of several contributions. We release the python code fastPTA implementing this framework and ready to use.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_02864
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Forecasting the sensitivity of Pulsar Timing Arrays to gravitational wave backgrounds
Babak, Stanislav
Falxa, Mikel
Franciolini, Gabriele
Pieroni, Mauro
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) observations hinted towards the existence of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the nHz frequency band. Still, the nature of the SGWB signal cannot be confidently inferred from current data, and the leading explanation invokes mergers of supermassive black holes. If confirmed, such discovery would not only represent a turning point in our understanding of astrophysics, but it may severely limit the capability of searching for additional cosmological sources in the nHz frequency range. In this work, we build a simple framework to forecast the sensitivity of future PTA configurations and assess the parameter estimation of SGWB, which could consist of several contributions. We release the python code fastPTA implementing this framework and ready to use.
title Forecasting the sensitivity of Pulsar Timing Arrays to gravitational wave backgrounds
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02864