Long-Term Timing of Millisecond Pulsars and Gravitational Wave Detection

TL;DR

This thesis demonstrates that long-term timing of millisecond pulsars can achieve the precision needed for gravitational wave detection, with most sources showing sufficient stability and potential for future GW observations.

Contribution

It provides long-term timing results for 20 MSPs, showing their stability and potential for gravitational wave detection, and sets limits on the background GW strength.

Findings

Most MSPs have sufficient stability for GW detection

Timing at sub-100 ns precision is achievable

Strong limits on the GW background are established

Abstract

(Abridged) This thesis presents long-term timing results on 20 millisecond pulsars (MSPs). It has been predicted that such timing may detect gravitational waves (GWs) - a major (but untested) prediction of general relativity. Our results demonstrate that most of the investigated MSPs have sufficient stability to enable such detection experiments. Furthermore, the timing data of the brightest few sources shows that timing at sub-100 ns precision may be achievable and that, therefore, GW detection within the next decade is likely. Finally, we use our data to place a strong limit on the strength of a predicted background of GWs.