Upper Bounds on the Low-Frequency Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from Pulsar Timing Observations: Current Limits and Future Prospects

By Fredrick A. Jenet, G. Hobbs, Willem van Straten, R. Manchester, M. Bailes, J. Verbiest, Russell T. Edwards, A. Hotan, J. Sarkissian, S. Ord. 2006

293 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using a statistically rigorous analysis method, we place limits on the existence of an isotropic stochastic gravitational wave background using pulsar timing observations. We consider backgrounds whose characteristic strain spectra may be described as a power-law dependence with frequency. Such backgrounds include an astrophysical background produced by coalescing supermassive black-hole binary systems and cosmological backgrounds due to relic gravitational waves and cosmic strings. Using the best available data, we obtain an upper limit on the energy density per unit logarithmic frequency interval of Ω h2 ≤ 1.9 × 10-8 for an astrophysical background that is 5 times more stringent than the earlier limit of 1.1 × 10-7 found by Kaspi and colleagues. We also provide limits on a background due to relic gravitational waves and cosmic strings of Ω h2 ≤ 2.0 × 10-8 and Ω h2 ≤ 1.9 × 10-8, respectively. All of the quoted upper limits correspond to a 0.1% false alarm rate together with a 95% detection rate. We discuss the physical implications of these results and highlight the future possibilities of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array project. We find that our current results can (1) constrain the merger rate of supermassive binary black hole systems at high redshift, (2) rule out some relationships between the black hole mass and the galactic halo mass, (3) constrain the rate of expansion in the inflationary era, and (4) provide an upper bound on the dimensionless tension of a cosmic string background.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0fbfae1b7e91ef0d0eb3db36c70a35c174d0fc62

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background (2023, background): “…(PPTA, Manchester et al. 2013) and the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA, Desvignes et al. 2016), following many years of null results and steadily decreasing upper limits on the GWB am- 1 See Jenet et al. (2006) for an early example of a cross-correlation statistic for PTA GWB detection. plitude.”
European Pulsar Timing Array Limits on Continuous Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries (2015, methodology): “Consequently, in the last decade several detection techniques have been developed in this direction (e.g. Anholm et al. 2009; van Haasteren et al. 2009; Lentati et al. 2013; Chamberlin et al. 2014) and applied to the EPTA, PPTA, and NANOGrav datasets to get limits on the amplitude of a putative isot”
Pulsar timing signal from ultralight scalar dark matter (2013, background): “The sensitivity achievable by PPTA by monitoring 20 pulsars for 5 years with the timing precision δtrms = 100 ns is estimated as hc ≈ 2 · 10−15 at the frequency f = 7 · 10−9 Hz.”
Placing limits on the stochastic gravitational-wave background using European Pulsar Timing Array data (2011, methodology): “Recently, Sesana et al. (2008) have extensively investigated a wide variety of assembly scenarios, including those considered in Jenet et al. (2006).”
SEVEN-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE (WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION (2010, background): “Constraints at higher frequencies come from pulsar timing measurements at ∼ 10−8 Hz (Jenet et al. 2006), recent data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) at 100 Hz (with limits of Ωgw < 6.9× 10−6 Abbott et al. 2009), and at frequencies > 10−10 Hz from measurements of…”
The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (2009, background): “Jenet et al. (2006) published the first major result from the PPTA.”
The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays (2008, background): “13 are derived by normalising equation (53) to the sensitivity quoted by Jenet et al. (2006) for the complete Parkes PTA (labelled as ”complete PPTA” in Fig.”
Timing stability of millisecond pulsars and prospects for gravitational-wave detection (2009, background): “The one-sided power spectrum of the effect of such a GWB on pulsar timing residuals is given by: where h c is the characteristic strain spectrum, deﬁned as: (3) Jenet et al. (2006) also summarized the characteristics and expected ranges for various GWBs of interest.”
Measurement and correction of variations in interstellar dispersion in high-precision pulsar timing (2012, methodology): “For the common mode we choose a Gaussian process with a spectrum chosen to match a common model of the incoherent gravitational wave background (GWB), i.e. PGWB(f ) = (A2GWB/12π2)f −13/3 (Jenet et al. 2006; Hobbs et al. 2009).”
Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology with Gravitational Waves (2009, background): “The most stringent limits to date are from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array [208], which sets an upper limit on a stochastic background of Ωgw ≤ 2 × 10−8.”