Full analytic expression of overlap reduction function for gravitational wave background with pulsar timing arrays

Detecting a Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background: The Overlap Reduction Function

Pulsar timing arrays: the promise of gravitational wave detection.

We describe the history, methods, tools, and challenges of using pulsars to detect gravitational waves. Pulsars act as celestial clocks detecting gravitational perturbations in space-time at wavelengths of light-years. The field is poised to make its first detection of nanohertz gravitational waves in the next 10 years. Controversies remain over how far we can reduce the noise in the pulsars, h...

The gravitational-wave discovery space of pulsar timing arrays

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in using pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) as gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. To date, that interest has focused mainly on three particularly promising source types: supermassive black hole binaries, cosmic strings, and the stochastic background from early-Universe phase transitions. In this paper, by contrast, our aim is to investigate the PTA potentia...

Detecting the stochastic gravitational wave background using pulsar timing

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 ns will be able to make a direct detection of the predicted stochastic background from coal...

The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays

Massive black hole binary systems, with masses in the range ∼ 10 − 10 M⊙, are among the primary sources of gravitational waves in the frequency window ∼ 10 Hz−0.1Hz. Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) are the observational means by which we will be able to observe gravitational radiation from these systems. We carry out a systematic study of the genera...