Bayesian methods for the detection of continuous gravitational waves (CGWs) in pulsar timing array (PTA) data incur substantial computational costs that grow rapidly due to the number of noise and signal parameters characterizing the fitted model being proportional to the size of the PTA. This computational burden limits the scalability of these methods for large-scale PTAs comprising hundreds of pulsars anticipated from next-generation radio astronomy facilities. In this work, we introduce a computationally efficient frequentist method designed to circumvent this challenge. This is achieved by combining an adaptive spline fitting algorithm that nonparametrically suppresses red noise, thereby eliminating the need for complex noise modeling inherent to Bayesian methods, with a novel scheme for optimizing the subsets of pulsars included in the search. We quantify the performance of our method on a simulated dataset based on the NANOGrav 15-yr data release and find that it achieves a performance comparable to that of Bayesian analysis: for a CGW signal with a signal-to-noise ratio of $\approx 10$, our method yields a relative characteristic strain error of 1.0% and a frequency error of 0.072% from the injected values by using the optimal pulsar selections, while the same errors are 1.7% and 0.16%, respectively, for the standard Bayesian analysis. At the same time, our analysis completes in less than 5 h, in contrast to the 1–2 days required by Bayesian methods. This allows us to perform a rigorous study of our method using multiple data realizations and signal parameters, establishing it as an efficient and scalable tool for CGW searches with large-scale PTAs.

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• Gravitational wave detection
• Gravitational waves
• Neutron stars & pulsars