Hazboun, J. S.

Romano, J. D.

Smith, Tristan L.

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Swarthmore College Works Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works Physics & Astronomy 10-23-2019 Hasasia: A Python Package For Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves J. S. Hazboun J. D. Romano Tristan L. Smith Swarthmore College, tsmith2@swarthmore.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics  Part of the Physics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation J. S. Hazboun, J. D. Romano, and Tristan L. Smith. (2019). "Hasasia: A Python Package For Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves". Journal Of Open Source Software. Volume 4, Issue 42. DOI: 10.21105/joss.01775 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-physics/380 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Physics & Astronomy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Hasasia: A Python package for Pulsar Timing ArraySensitivity CurvesJeffrey S. Hazboun1, Joseph D. Romano2, and Tristan L. Smith31 University of Washington Bothell 2 Texas Tech University 3 Swarthmore CollegeDOI: 10.21105/joss.01775Software• Review• Repository• ArchiveSubmitted: 20 September 2019Published: 23 October 2019LicenseAuthors of papers retaincopyright and release the workunder a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 InternationalLicense (CC-BY).SummaryGravitational waves are quickly changing the way that we view the wider universe, enablingobservations of compact objects in highly relativistic scenarios. Gravitational-wave detectorsmeasure the minuscule, time-dependent perturbations to the spacetime metric. These detec-tors have long been characterized by a sensitivity curve, a plot in the frequency domain, whichsummarizes their ability to detect a given signal. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are collectionsof highly precise millisecond pulsars regularly monitored for shifts in the spin period of pul-sars indicative of gravitational waves in the nanohertz regime. See Hobbs & Dai (2017) andBurke-Spolaor & others (2019) for a review of pulsar timing arrays and the astrophysics ofnanohertz gravitational waves. The sensitivity curves for PTAs are often overly simplified inthe literature, lacking detailed information about the fit to a pulsar’s timing parameters andassuming identical pulsar noise characteristics.Hasasia is a Python package for calculating and building accurate PTA sensitivity curves,largely based on the formalism presented in (Hazboun, Romano, & Smith, 2019). This soft-ware is designed for use by astronomers interested in sources of nanohertz gravitational wavesand PTA data analysts alike. It uses standard Python packages, such as Numpy (Oliphant,n.d.) and Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al., 2018) to build sensitivity curves from genericPTAs of individually constructed pulsars. Hasasia includes the ability to add time-correlated(red) noise into the noise power spectral density of individual pulsars. The strongest expectedsignal in the PTA band is the stochastic gravitational wave background from supermassivebinary black holes, which is also modeled as a red noise process. Therefore, it is important totake low-frequency noise into account when assessing the sensitivity of a PTA.The API is designed with a general astrophysics audience in mind. A number of “standard”PTA configurations are included as part of the package, including the NANOGrav 11-yeardata, with more coming soon. It has already been made a requirement of another Pythonpackage (Kaiser, McWilliams, & Hazboun, n.d.). The various sensitivity curve objects inhasasia allow the calculation of signal-to-noise ratios for a generic user-defined gravitational-wave signal. Though the user interface is designed with the non-expert in mind, a PTA dataanalyst can use real pulsar timing data to assess the sensitivity of a given PTA.AcknowledgementsJSH and JDR acknowledge subawards from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for the NSFNANOGrav Physics Frontier Center (NSF PFC-1430284). JDR also acknowledges supportfrom start-up funds from Texas Tech University. TLS acknowledges support from NASA80NSSC18K0728 and the Hungerford Fund at Swarthmore College. Finally, we thank RobertCaldwell, Rutger van Haasteren and Xavi Siemens for useful discussions and Justin Ellis forsharing some preliminary code.Hazboun et al., (2019). Hasasia: A Python package for Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(42), 1775.https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.017751ReferencesAstropy Collaboration, Price-Whelan, A. M., Sipőcz, B. M., Günther, H. M., Lim, P. L.,Crawford, S. M., Conseil, S., et al. (2018). The Astropy Project: Building an Open-scienceProject and Status of the v2.0 Core Package, 156, 123. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aabc4fBurke-Spolaor, S., & others. (2019). The Astrophysics of Nanohertz Gravitational Waves.Astron. Astrophys. Rev., 27(1), 5. doi:10.1007/s00159-019-0115-7Hazboun, J. S., Romano, J. D., & Smith, T. L. (2019). Realistic sensitivity curves for pulsartiming arrays. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04341Hobbs, G., & Dai, S. (2017). Gravitational wave research using pulsar timing arrays. Natl.Sci. Rev., 4(5), 707–717. doi:10.1093/nsr/nwx126Kaiser, A., McWilliams, S., & Hazboun, J. (n.d.). Gwent: Gravitational wave dEtector desigNtoolkit. Retrieved from https://gwent.readthedocs.io/Oliphant, T. (n.d.). NumPy: A guide to NumPy. USA: Trelgol Publishing. Retrieved fromhttp://www.numpy.org/Hazboun et al., (2019). Hasasia: A Python package for Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves. Journal of Open Source Software, 4(42), 1775.https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.017752

Hasasia: A Python Package For Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves

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Hasasia: A Python Package For Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity Curves

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