On Detecting Nearby Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Sources via Pulsar Timing Arrays

Abstract

Massive binary black holes (MBBHs) in nearby galactic centers, if any, may be nanohertz gravitational wave (GW) sources for pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) to detect. Normally the objective GWs for PTA experiments are approximated as plane waves because their sources are presumably located far away. For nearby GW sources, however, this approximation may be inaccurate due to the curved GW wave front and the GW strength changes along the paths of PTA pulsar pulses. In this paper, we analyze the near-field effect in the PTA detection of nearby sources and find it is important if the source distance is less than a few tens of megaparsecs, and ignoring this effect may lead to a significant signal-to-noise underestimation especially when the source distance is comparable to the pulsar distances. As examples, we assume a nanohertz MBBH source located at either the Galactic Center (GC) or the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) according to the observational constraints/hints on the MBBH parameter space, and estimate its detectability by current/future PTAs. We find that the GC MBBH may be detectable by the Square Kilometer Array PTA. Detecting the LMC MBBH is challenging; however, if a number (N ≳ 10) of stable millisecond pulsars can be found in the LMC center, the MBBH may be detectable via a PTA formed by these pulsars. We further illustrate the near-field effects on the PTA detection of an isotropic GW background contributed mainly by nearby GW sources, and the resulting angular correlation is similar to the Hellings–Downs curve.