Resolving multiple supermassive black hole binaries with pulsar timing arrays
Resolving multiple supermassive black hole binaries with pulsar timing arrays
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DOI：
10.1103/physrevd.85.044034
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发表时间：
2011-12
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
S. Babak;A. Sesana
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Babak;A. Sesana
我们研究了脉冲星定时阵列在天空中单独分辨和定位单色引力波（GW）源的能力。鉴于宇宙学上存在大量螺旋式大质量黑洞双星，它们在脉冲星定时阵列域中的可观测信号预计将是几个强度不同的近单色GW的叠加。在每个频率点中，信号既不是随机背景，也不是在其各个分量中完全可分辨的。在这种情况下，至关重要的是探索编码在雷达阵列空间分布中的信息如何通过单独分辨和定位天空中最强的源来帮助恢复GW信号的起源。在本文中，我们开发了一个最大似然为基础的方法完成了这一目的。我们测试的算法对无噪声的数据显示，高达$P/3$源可以解决和本地化的一个阵列的$P$雷达在天空中。我们通过对包含未知数量且强度不同的信号的无噪和有噪数据进行盲搜索来验证代码。即使没有采用任何适当的搜索算法，我们的分析过程表现良好，恢复和正确定位在天空中几乎所有的注入源。
We study the capability of a pulsar timing array to individually resolve and localize in the sky monochromatic gravitational wave (GW) sources. Given a cosmological population of inspiralling massive black hole binaries, their observable signal in the pulsar timing array domain is expected to be a superposition of several nearly-monochromatic GWs of different strength. In each frequency bin, the signal is neither a stochastic background nor perfectly resolvable in its individual components. In this context, it is crucial to explore how the information encoded in the spatial distribution of the array of pulsars might help recovering the origin of the GW signal, by resolving individually and locating in the sky the strongest sources. In this paper we develop a maximum-likelihood-based method finalized to this purpose. We test the algorithm against noiseless data showing that up to $P/3$ sources can be resolved and localized in the sky by an array of $P$ pulsars. We validate the code by performing blind searches on both noiseless and noisy data containing an unknown number of signals with different strengths. Even without employing any proper search algorithm, our analysis procedure performs well, recovering and correctly locating in the sky almost all the injected sources.