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Argus

Welcome to the Argus project documentation.

Argus is a research project for the detection of nHz gravitational waves using Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs), leveraging a state-space representation.

It is an ongoing effort to open-source methods developed at the University of Melbourne and OzGrav. For the accompanying papers please see:

About this Documentation

This documentation provides an overview of the project, installation and usage instructions, API details, and developer notes for contributors.

Note

If you're new to Argus, start with the "Getting Started" section.

Example Usage

You can find examples of standard PTA analysis using various datasets:

Interactive Notebooks

Interactive Jupyter notebooks are available in the notebooks/ directory of the repository.

Key Features

  • State-space framework for PTA data analysis
  • Bayesian parameter estimation using NUTS sampling with NumPyro
  • Gravitational wave detection and characterization
  • Pulsar noise modeling with flexible priors
  • JAX-based implementation for high-performance computing

Etymology

The project is named Argus, after the hundred-eyed giant of Greek mythology.

In a pulsar timing array, multiple pulsars across the sky act as a network of cosmic "eyes", continuously watching for gravitational waves.

Quick Start

To get started with Argus:

  1. Install the package: See the Getting Started guide
  2. Run your first analysis: Check out the examples
  3. Explore the API: Browse the API Reference
  4. Contribute: Read our Contributing Guide

Research and Citations

If you use Argus in your research, please cite the relevant papers:

@article{kimpson2024a,
  title={State-space analysis for pulsar timing arrays},
  author={Kimpson, Tom and others},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.14613},
  year={2024}
}

Support