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

11th International LISA Symposium

Wang, Yan^1 ; Mohanty, Soumya D.^2 ; Qian, Yi-Qian^1

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;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/840/1/012058/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/840/1/012058

来源: IOP

【 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.