Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Gravitational Wave Timing Residual Models For Pulsar Timing Experiments, Casey Mcgrath

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to detect gravitational waves now gives scientists and astronomers a new way in which they can study the universe. So far, the scientific collaboration LIGO has been successful in detecting binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers. These types of sources produce gravitational waves with frequencies of the order hertz to millihertz. But there do exist other theoretical sources which would produce gravitational waves in different parts of the frequency spectrum. Of these are the theoretical mergers of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), which could occur upon the merging of two galaxies with supermassive black holes at …

Measuring Deterministic And Stochastic Gravitational Waves With Pulsar Timing Array Experiments, Kristina Islo

Theses and Dissertations

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are uniquely poised to detect the nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) formed during galaxy merger. Efforts are underway to observe three species of gravitational signal from these systems: the stochastic ensemble, individual, adiabatic binary inspirals, and bursts with memory. This dissertation discusses all three.

A typical Bayesian search for evidence of a stochastic gravitational wave background from the superposition of many unresolvable SMBHB inspirals requires weeks to months to deliver results. This is due in part to the inclusion of inter-pulsar spatial and temporal correlations induced in PTA data by such a …

Searching For Gravitational Waves Using Pulsar Timing Arrays, Justin Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

Gravitational Waves (GWs) are tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) offer a unique opportunity to detect low frequency GWs in the near future. Such a detection would be complementary to both LISA and LIGO GW efforts. In this frequency band, the expected source of GWs are Supermassive Black Hole Binaries (SMBHBs) that will most likely form an ensemble creating a stochastic GW background with possibly a few nearby/massive sources that will be individually resolvable. A direct detection of GWs will open a new window into the fields of …