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arXiv 1201.3573astro-ph.HEgr-qc
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用脉冲星定时阵列扩展引力波爆发搜索

Extending gravitational wave burst searches with pulsar timing arrays

Matthew Pitkin

摘要:

脉冲星定时阵列(PTA)正被用于寻找极低频引力波。脉冲星定时残差中的引力波信号有两个分量:一个与脉冲星距离无关,另一个与脉冲星距离有关,分别称为“地球项”(ET)和“脉冲星项”(PT)。脉冲星残差中爆发(或瞬态)引力波源的信号通常具有地球项和脉冲星项,它们之间的时间间隔为脉冲星到地球的飞行时间的量级。因此,这两个术语在实际的观测跨度上是不可观测的,但是在许多观测器中观测到的λ应该是相关的。我们表明,对(或更多)的恒星可以这样一种方式对齐,在某些天空位置的源所造成的PT可以到达地球的时间窗口内足够短,在一个现实的观测跨度被捕获。我们发现,在国际脉冲星定时阵列(IPTA)的67%的天空产生这样的对齐的脉冲星条款分开不到10年。我们比较了源事件率的估计值,如果搜索相关的PTs,或通过PT搜索,则需要在IPTA中观察一个信号,并且发现事件率需要比PTs高大约两个数量级才能观察到事件。我们还发现,在PT或ET搜索中,要实现类似数量的可观察事件,需要数十万个搜索器的阵列。这不利于PT用于全天空搜索,但它们可能用于目标特定源,并补充ET搜索。

英文摘要:

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are being used to search for very low frequency gravitational waves. A gravitational wave signal appears in pulsar timing residuals through two components: one independent of and one dependent on the pulsar's distance, called the 'Earth term' (ET) and 'pulsar term' (PT), respectively. The signal of a burst (or transient) gravitational wave source in pulsars' residuals will in general have the Earth and pulsar terms separated by times of the order of the time of flight from the pulsar to the Earth. Therefore, both terms are not observable over a realistic observation span, but the ETs observed in many pulsars should be correlated. We show that pairs (or more) of pulsars can be aligned in such a way that the PTs caused by a source at certain sky locations can arrive at Earth within a time window short enough to be captured during a realistic observation span. We find that for the pulsars within the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) ~67 per cent of the sky produces such alignments for pulsars terms separated by less than 10 years. We compare estimates of the source event rate that would be required to observe one signal in the IPTA if searching for the correlated ETs, or in searching via the PTs, and find that event rates would need to be about two orders of magnitude higher to observe an event with the PTs than the ETs. We also find that an array of hundreds of thousands of pulsars would be required to achieve similar numbers of observable events in PT or ET searches. This disfavours PTs being used for all-sky searches, but they could potentially be used target specific sources and be complementary to ET only searches.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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