Fast Bayesian analysis of individual binaries in pulsar timing array data

Understand

Searching for gravitational waves in pulsar timing array data is computationally intensive.

• The data is unevenly sampled, and the noise is heteroscedastic, necessitating the use of a time-domain likelihood function with attendant expensive matrix operations.
• The computational cost is exacerbated when searching for individual supermassive black hole binaries, which have a large parameter space due to the additional pulsar distance, phase offset and noise model parameters needed for each pulsar.
• We introduce a new formulation of the likelihood function which can be used to make the Bayesian analysis significantly faster.