Analysis of the Gravitational Wave Background Using Gamma-Ray Pulsar Timing Arrays with Next-Generation Detectors

TL;DR

This paper explores how future gamma-ray detectors, especially IACTs, can enhance pulsar timing arrays to better detect the gravitational wave background, surpassing current capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces the potential of next-generation gamma-ray detectors, including spaceborne and ground-based IACTs, for improving gravitational wave background detection via pulsar timing arrays.

Findings

IACTs significantly improve PTA sensitivity

Next-generation detectors outperform Fermi-LAT data

Higher photon statistics enhance gravitational wave detection

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the potential of gamma-ray pulsar time array (PTA) on gravitational waves background (GWB) using future gamma-ray detectors with larger effective areas. We consider both spaceborne detectors and ground-based imaging air Cherenkov telescope arrays (IACTs). We simulated the detected photons from pulsars using the response of hypothetical detectors taking into account the backgrounds and analyzed the sensitivities. Our results showed that thanks to the higher statistics of IACTs, the PTA using IACTs can improve significantly the performance compared with the PTA using Fermi-LAT data.