Pulsar timing arrays: the promise of gravitational wave detection.

@article{Lommen2015PulsarTA,
  title={Pulsar timing arrays: the promise of gravitational wave detection.},
  author={A. N. Lommen},
  journal={Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society},
  year={2015},
  volume={78 12},
  pages={
          124901
        }
}
  • A. Lommen
  • Published 13 November 2015
  • Physics
  • Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society
We describe the history, methods, tools, and challenges of using pulsars to detect gravitational waves. Pulsars act as celestial clocks detecting gravitational perturbations in space-time at wavelengths of light-years. The field is poised to make its first detection of nanohertz gravitational waves in the next 10 years. Controversies remain over how far we can reduce the noise in the pulsars, how many pulsars should be in the array, what kind of source we will detect first, and how we can best… 

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It is shown that the detection of gravitational radiation from individually resolvable supermassive black hole binary systems can yield direct information about the masses and spins of the black holes, provided that the gravitational-wave-induced timing fluctuations both at the pulsar and at Earth are detected.
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