Finding and characterizing gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries is a central goal of pulsar timing array experiments, which will require analysis methods that can be efficient on our rapidly growing datasets. Here we present a novel approach built on three key elements: (i) precalculating and interpolating expensive matrix operations; (ii) semi-analytically marginalizing over the gravitational-wave phase at the pulsars; (iii) numerically marginalizing over the pulsar distance uncertainties. With these improvements the recent NANOGrav 15 yr dataset can be analyzed in minutes after an O(1 h) setup phase, instead of an analysis taking days–weeks with previous methods. The same setup can be used to efficiently analyze the dataset under any sinusoidal deterministic model. In particular, this will aid testing the binary hypothesis by allowing for efficient analysis of competing models (e.g. incoherent, monopolar, or dipolar sine wave model) and scrambled datasets for false alarm studies. The same setup can be updated in minutes for new realizations of the data, which enables large simulation studies.

中文翻译：

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脉冲星时序阵列数据中连续引力波的高效贝叶斯推理和模型选择


从单个超大质量黑洞双星中寻找和表征引力波是脉冲星计时阵列实验的中心目标，这将需要能够在我们快速增长的数据集上高效的分析方法。在这里，我们提出了一种基于三个关键要素的新方法：（i） 预先计算和插值昂贵的矩阵运算;（ii） 在脉冲星的引力波相位上半分析边缘化;（iii） 在脉冲星距离不确定性上进行数值边缘化。通过这些改进，最近的 NANOGrav 15 yr 数据集可以在 O（1 h） 设置阶段后在几分钟内进行分析，而以前的方法需要数天或数周的分析时间。相同的设置可用于在任何正弦确定性模型下有效地分析数据集。特别是，这将有助于测试二进制假设，允许对竞争模型（例如不相干、单极或偶极正弦波模型）和用于误报研究的加扰数据集进行有效分析。相同的设置可以在几分钟内更新，以实现新的数据，从而支持大型仿真研究。