Searching for the Nano-Hertz Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I

Abstract Observing and timing a group of millisecond pulsars with high rotational stability enables the direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). The GW signals can be identified from the spatial correlations encoded in the times-of-arrival of widely spaced pulsar-pairs. The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) is a collaboration aiming at the direct GW detection with observations carried out using Chinese radio telescopes. This short article serves as a “table of contents” for a forthcoming series of papers related to the CPTA Data Release 1 (CPTA DR1) which uses observations from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. Here, after summarizing the time span and accuracy of CPTA DR1, we…

• CA
  Chinese Academy of Sciences

  Award: 2020SKA0120100
• M
  Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
• NA
  National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences