On detection of the stochastic gravitational-wave background using the Parkes pulsar timing array
D. R. B. Yardley, W. A. Coles, G. B. Hobbs, J. P. W. Verbiest, R. N. Manchester, W. van Straten, F. A. Jenet, M. Bailes, N. D. R. Bhat, S. Burke-Spolaor, D. J. … 展开作者
D. R. B. Yardley, W. A. Coles, G. B. Hobbs, J. P. W. Verbiest, R. N. Manchester, W. van Straten, F. A. Jenet, M. Bailes, N. D. R. Bhat, S. Burke-Spolaor, D. J. Champion, A. W. Hotan, S. Oslowski, J. E. Reynolds, J. M. Sarkissian
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12 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS
We search for the signature of an isotropic stochastic gravitational-wave background in pulsar timing observations using a frequency-domain correlation technique. These observations, which span roughly 12 yr, were obtained with the 64-m Parkes radio telescope augmented by public domain observations from the Arecibo Observatory. A wide range of signal processing issues unique to pulsar timing and not previously presented in the literature are discussed. These include the effects of quadratic removal, irregular sampling, and variable errors which exacerbate the spectral leakage inherent in estimating the steep red spectrum of the gravitational-wave background. These observations are found to be consistent with the null hypothesis, that no gravitational-wave background is present, with 76 percent confidence. We show that the detection statistic is dominated by the contributions of only a few pulsars because of the inhomogeneity of this data set. The issues of detecting the signature of a gravitational-wave background with future observations are discussed.
Flux densities are basic observation parameters to describe pulsars. In the most updated pulsar catalog, 24% of the listed radio pulsars have no flux density measurement at any frequency. Here, we report the first flux density measurements, spectral indices, pulse profiles, and correlations of the spectral index with pulsar parameters for 19 pulsars employing the Ultra-Wideband Low (UWL) receiver system installed on the Parkes radio telescope. The results for spectral indices of 17 pulsars are in the range between -0.6 and -3.10. The polarization profiles of thirteen pulsars are shown. There i…
We present high signal-to-noise, full polarization pulse profiles for 40 bright, 'slowly'-rotating (non-recycled) pulsars using the new Ultra-Wideband Low-frequency (UWL; 704-4032 MHz) receiver on the Parkes radio telescope. We obtain updated and accurate interstellar medium parameters towards these pulsars (dispersion measures and Faraday rotation measures), and reveal Faraday dispersion towards PSR J1721-3532 caused by interstellar scattering. We find general trends in the pulse profiles including decreasing fractional linear polarization and increasing degree of circular polarization with i…
Even though Pulsar Timing Arrays already have the potential to detect the gravitational wave background by finding a quadrupole correlation in the timing residuals, this goal has not yet been achieved. Motivated by some theoretical arguments, we analyzed some advantages of including the millisecond pulsars within globular clusters, especially those in their cores, in current and future Pulsar Timing Array projects for detecting the gravitational waves emitted by an ensemble of supermassive black holes.
We suggest the possibility of including millisecond pulsars inside the core of globular clusters in pulsar timing array experiments. Since they are very close to each other, their gravitational wave induced timing residuals are expected to be almost the same, because both the Earth and the pulsar terms are correlated. We simulate the expected timing residuals, due to the gravitational wave signal emitted by a uniform supermassive black-hole binary population, on the millisecond pulsars inside a globular cluster core. In this respect, Terzan 5 has been adopted as a globular cluster prototype an…
The nature of dark matter remains obscure in spite of decades of experimental efforts. The mass of dark matter candidates can span a wide range, and its coupling with the Standard Model sector remains uncertain. All these unknowns make the etection of dark matter extremely challenging. Ultralight dark matter, with $m \sim10^{-22}$ eV, is proposed to reconcile the disagreements between observations and predictions from simulations of small-scale structures in the cold dark matter paradigm, while remaining consistent with other observations. Because of its large de Broglie wavelength and large l…
Pulsar timing uses the highly stable pulsar spin period to investigate many astrophysical topics. In particular, pulsar timing arrays make use of a set of extremely well-timed pulsars and their time correlations as a challenging detector of gravitational waves. It turns out that pulsar timing arrays are particularly sensitive to ultra-low-frequency gravitational waves, which makes them complementary to other gravitational-wave detectors. Here, we summarize the basics, focusing especially on supermassive black-hole binaries and cosmic strings, which have the potential to form a stochastic gravi…
A nanohertz-frequency stochastic gravitational-wave background can potentially be detected through the precise timing of an array of millisecond pulsars. This background produces low-frequency noise in the pulse arrival times that would have a characteristic spectrum common to all pulsars and a well-defined spatial correlation. Recently the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves collaboration (NANOGrav) found evidence for the common-spectrum component in their 12.5-year data set. Here we report on a search for the background using the second data release of the Parkes Pul…
We aim to resolve a misunderstanding about whether the so-called "Earth term" in the pulsar timing response to a gravitational wave is in phase among a set of pulsars. We note that the misunderstanding has potentially arisen from the statements that the Earth term is "coherent" or "builds up coherently" among the pulsars. We clarify what authors mean by "coherent" in these statements, pointing out that "coherent" does not indicate that the Earth terms are in phase among the pulsars. Using the pulsar timing residuals induced by a continuous gravitational wave, we show that the Earth term does n…