Single Pulsar Timing and Gravitational Waves

The possibility that gravitational waves might be detected by their effects on pulsar signals has been considered for some time. For studies of single pulsars, however, it has been thought that cancellations in the gravitational-radiation contributions made the effects disappointingly small. It turns out, though, that a plausible assumption in those analyses is incorrect, and the effects, though still very small, might be within the reach of observation. The most promising candidate systems would be pulsars close to rapidly-orbiting binaries. (MNRAS 430 (2013) 305)