Detecting the stochastic gravitational wave background using pulsar timing

Abstract

The direct detection of gravitational waves is a major goal of current astrophysics. We provide details of a new method for detecting a stochastic background of gravitational waves using pulsar timing data. Our results show that regular timing observations of 40 pulsars each with a timing accuracy of 100 nano-seconds will be able to make a direct detection of the predicted stochastic background from coalescing black holes within five years. With an improved pre-whitening algorithm, or if the background is at the upper end of the predicted range, a significant detection should be possible with only 20 pulsars.

Accepted by ApJ Letters

References in corpus (3)

• Gravitational Waves Probe the Coalescence Rate of Massive Black Hole Binaries
• Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Black Hole Binaries: Predictions for LISA and Pulsar Timing Arrays
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