Continuous gravitational wave searches with pulsar timing arrays: Maximization versus marginalization over pulsar phase parameters

[摘要] Resolvable Supermassive Black Hole Binaries are promising sources for Pulsar Timing Array based gravitational wave searches. Search algorithms for such targets must contend with the large number of so-called pulsar phase parameters in the joint log-likelihood function of the data. We compare the localization accuracy for two approaches: Maximization over the pulsar phase parameters (MaxPhase) against marginalization over them (AvPhase). Using simulated data from a pulsar timing array with 17 pulsars, we find that for weak and moderately strong signals, AvPhase outperforms MaxPhase significantly, while they perform comparably for strong signals.

[发布机构] School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1037 Luoyu Road, Hubei Province, Wuhan; 430074, China^1;Department of Physics, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, One West University Blvd, Brownsville; TX; 78520, United States^2

[关键词] Localization accuracy;Log-likelihood functions;Marginalization;MAX-phase;Phase parameters;Search Algorithms;Strong signal;Supermassive black holes