Optimizing Pulsar Timing Arrays Observations for Detection and Characterization of Low-Frequency Gravitational Wave Sources

Understand

Observations of low-frequency gravitational waves will require the highest possible timing precision from an array of the most spin-stable pulsars.

• We can improve the sensitivity of a pulsar timing array (PTA) to different gravitational-wave sources by observing pulsars with low timing noise over years to decades and distributed across the sky.
• We discuss observing strategies for a PTA focused on a stochastic gravitational-wave background such as from unresolved supermassive black hole binaries as well as focused on single continuous-wave sources.
• First we describe the method to calculate a PTA's sensitivity to different gravitational-wave-source classes.