Kinematic anisotropies in PTA observations: Analytical toolkit

Blümke, Maximilian; Schmitz, Kai; Schröder, Tobias; Agarwal, Deepali; Romano, Joseph D.

Abstract

The reported evidence for an isotropic gravitational-wave background (GWB) from pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations has motivated searches for extrinsic and intrinsic anisotropies. Kinematic anisotropies may arise as a consequence of a boosted observer moving with respect to the frame in which the GWB appears isotropic. In this work, we present an analytical toolbox to describe the effects of kinematic anisotropies on the overlap reduction function. Our analytical results differ from previous findings at the quadrupole order and are detailed in three appendices. For the first time, we also derive the corresponding auto-correlation using two approaches, taking the pulsar distances to be infinite or finite, respectively. Our formulas can be used in forecasts or Bayesian analysis pipelines.