Advantages of Including Globular Cluster Millisecond Pulsars in Pulsar Timing Arrays

TL;DR

Including globular cluster millisecond pulsars in Pulsar Timing Arrays enhances the potential for gravitational wave detection by leveraging their unique properties, especially those in cluster cores, which may improve sensitivity to signals from supermassive black hole ensembles.

Contribution

This paper highlights the advantages of incorporating globular cluster millisecond pulsars into Pulsar Timing Arrays, emphasizing their potential to improve gravitational wave detection capabilities.

Findings

Globular cluster pulsars can improve PTA sensitivity.

Millisecond pulsars in cluster cores are particularly valuable.

Inclusion of these pulsars may accelerate gravitational wave detection.

Abstract

Even though Pulsar Timing Arrays already have the potential to detect the gravitational wave background by finding a quadrupole correlation in the timing residuals, this goal has not yet been achieved. Motivated by some theoretical arguments, we analyzed some advantages of including the millisecond pulsars within globular clusters, especially those in their cores, in current and future Pulsar Timing Array projects for detecting the gravitational waves emitted by an ensemble of supermassive black holes.