Limits on the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves
Creators
- Demorest, P. B.1
- Ferdman, R. D.2
- Gonzalez, M. E.3
- Nice, D.4
- Ransom, S. M.1
- Stairs, I. H.3
- Arzoumanian, Z.5, 6
- Brazier, A.7
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Burke-Spolaor, S.8
- Chamberlin, S. J.9
- Cordes, J. M.7
- Ellis, J.9
- Finn, L. S.10
- Freire, P.11
- Giampanis, S.9
- Jenet, F.12
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Kaspi, V. M.2
- Lazio, J.8
- Lommen, A. N.13
- McLaughlin, M.14
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Palliyaguru, N.14
- Perrodin, D.13
- Shannon, R. M.15
- Siemens, X.9
- Stinebring, D.16
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Swiggum, J.14
- Zhu, W. W.3
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1.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory
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2.
McGill University
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3.
University of British Columbia
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4.
Lafayette College
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5.
Goddard Space Flight Center
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6.
Universities Space Research Association
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7.
Cornell University
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8.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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9.
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
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10.
Pennsylvania State University
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11.
Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy
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12.
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
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13.
Franklin & Marshall College
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14.
West Virginia University
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15.
Astronomy and Space
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16.
Oberlin College
Abstract
We present an analysis of high-precision pulsar timing data taken as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) project. We have observed 17 pulsars for a span of roughly five years using the Green Bank and Arecibo radio telescopes. We analyze these data using standard pulsar timing models, with the addition of time-variable dispersion measure and frequency-variable pulse shape terms. Sub-microsecond timing residuals are obtained in nearly all cases, and the best rms timing residuals in this set are ~30-50 ns. We present methods for analyzing post-fit timing residuals for the presence of a gravitational wave signal with a specified spectral shape. These optimally take into account the timing fluctuation power removed by the model fit, and can be applied to either data from a single pulsar, or to a set of pulsars to detect a correlated signal. We apply these methods to our data set to set an upper limit on the strength of the nHz-frequency stochastic supermassive black hole gravitational wave background of h_c (1 yr^(–1)) < 7 × 10^(–15) (95%). This result is dominated by the timing of the two best pulsars in the set, PSRs J1713+0747 and J1909–3744.
Additional Information
© 2013 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2012 March 7; accepted 2012 November 15; published 2012 December 19. The NANOGrav project receives support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) PIRE program award number 0968296. NANOGrav research at UBC is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and Discovery Accelerator Supplement. P.B.D. acknowledges support from a Jansky Fellowship of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory during 2007–2010. A.N.L. gratefully acknowledges the support of NSF grant AST CAREER 07-48580. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Arecibo Observatory is operated by SRI International under a cooperative agreement with the NSF (AST-1100968), and in alliance with Ana G. Méndez-Universidad Metropolitana, and the Universities Space Research Association. The authors thank Rutger van Haasteren for helpful discussions about his previous work on this topic.Attached Files
Published - Demorest_2013_ApJ_762_94.pdf
Submitted - 1201.6641.pdf
Files
1201.6641.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 36918
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130214-090255320
Related works
- Describes
- http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.6641 (URL)
Funding
- NSF
- OISE-0968296
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory
- NSF
- AST 07-48580
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- NSF
- AST-1100968
Dates
- Created
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2013-02-19Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
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- Caltech groups
- TAPIR