Pulsar Timing Arrays: Status and Techniques

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current status and techniques of pulsar timing arrays, highlighting their applications in time standards, solar system error detection, and gravitational wave searches, with future improvements anticipated.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of existing pulsar timing array data sets, their processing methods, and future prospects for enhanced gravitational wave detection.

Findings

Development of pulsar-based time standards

Detection of errors in solar system ephemeris

Ongoing efforts to improve gravitational wave sensitivity

Abstract

Three pulsar timing arrays are now producing high quality data sets. As reviewed in this paper, these data sets are been processed to 1) develop a pulsar-based time standard, 2) search for errors in the solar system planetary ephemeris and 3) detect gravitational waves. It is expected that the data sets will significantly improve in the near future by combining existing observations and by using new telescopes.