Pulsar timing arrays as imaging gravitational wave telescopes: angular resolution and source (de)confusion

Abstract

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) will be sensitive to a finite number of gravitational wave (GW) "point" sources (e.g. supermassive black hole binaries). N quiet pulsars with accurately known distances d_{pulsar} can characterize up to 2N/7 distant chirping sources per frequency bin Δf_{gw}=1/T, and localize them with "diffraction limited" precision δθ\gtrsim (1/SNR)(λ_{gw}/d_{pulsar}). Even if the pulsar distances are poorly known, a PTA with F frequency bins can still characterize up to (2N/7)[1-(1/2F)] sources per bin, and the quasi-singular pattern of timing residuals in the vicinity of a GW source still allows the source to be localized quasi-topologically within roughly the smallest quadrilateral of quiet pulsars that encircles it on the sky, down to a limiting resolution δθ\gtrsim (1/SNR) \sqrt{λ_{gw}/d_{pulsar}}. PTAs may be unconfused, even at the lowest frequencies, with matched filtering always appropriate.

7 pages, 1 figure, matches Phys.Rev.D version