Pulsar-timing measurement of the circular polarization of the stochastic gravitational-wave background

Abstract

Pulsar-timing arrays (PTAs) are in the near future expected to detect a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) produced by a population of inspiralling super-massive black hole binaries. In this work, we consider a background that can be anisotropic and circularly polarized. We use the expansion of the intensity and the circular polarization in terms of spherical harmonics and the overlap reduction functions for each term in this expansion. We propose an unbiased real-space estimator that can separate the intensity and circular-polarization contributions of the SGWB to pulsar-timing-residual correlations and then validate the estimator on simulated data. We compute the signal-to-noise ratio of a circular-polarization component that has a dipole pattern under different assumptions about the PTA. We find that a nearly-maximal circular-polarization dipole may be detectable, which can aid in determining whether or not the background is dominated by a handful of bright sources.

10 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (14)

• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Gravitational-Wave Stochastic Background from Kinks and Cusps on Cosmic Strings
• Mapping gravitational-wave backgrounds using methods from CMB analysis: Application to pulsar timing arrays
• The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array Project: Second data release
• Measuring a Parity Violation Signature in the Early Universe via Ground-based Laser Interferometers
• Time-domain Implementation of the Optimal Cross-Correlation Statistic for Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background Searches in Pulsar Timing Data
• Polarization analysis of gravitational-wave backgrounds from the correlation signals of ground-based interferometers: measuring a circular-polarization mode
• Prospects for direct detection of circular polarization of gravitational-wave background
• Quest for circular polarization of gravitational wave background and orbits of laser interferometers in space
• Common-spectrum process versus cross-correlation for gravitational-wave searches using pulsar timing arrays
• Chirality of the gravitational-wave background and pulsar-timing arrays
• The effect of small inter-pulsar distance variations in stochastic gravitational wave background searches with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Fisher formalism for anisotropic gravitational-wave background searches with pulsar timing arrays
• pinta: The uGMRT Data Processing Pipeline for the Indian Pulsar Timing Array

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Prospects for Future Binary Black Hole GW Studies in Light of PTA Measurements
• Dissecting the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with Astrometry
• Pulsar Timing Array Harmonic Analysis and Source Angular Correlations
• Charting the Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Sky with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Correlations for an anisotropic polarized stochastic gravitational wave background in pulsar timing arrays
• Measuring kinematic anisotropies with pulsar timing arrays
• Probing Parity Violation in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with Astrometry
• Vector dark radiation and gravitational-wave polarization