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Related papers: Gravitational-wave Limits from Pulsar Timing Const…

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Galaxy observations suggest that mergers of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are rare events, with rates of order one per decade across the observable Universe. We present a framework to search for merging SMBHBs in pulsar timing…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-17 Sharon Mary Tomson , Boris Goncharov , Rutger van Haasteren

The nano-hertz (nHz) stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), generated by unresolved supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), provides a unique probe of their population and its cosmic evolution. In this work, we explore the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-28 Mohit Raj Sah , Suvodip Mukherjee

Inspiraling massive black-hole binaries (MBHBs) forming in the aftermath of galaxy mergers are expected to be the loudest gravitational-wave (GW) sources relevant for pulsar-timing arrays (PTAs) at nHz frequencies. The incoherent overlap of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-06-14 Matteo Bonetti , Alberto Sesana , Enrico Barausse , Francesco Haardt

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are among the most powerful known sources of gravitational waves (GWs). Accordingly, these systems could dominate GW emission in the micro- and millihertz frequency range. Within this domain, SMBHs…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-08 Matthias Daniel , Kris Pardo , Laura Sagunski

We study the formation of primordial black holes (PBHs) from the collapse of density perturbations induced by primordial gravitational waves (PGWs). The PGWs' interpretation of the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) detected by…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-10-14 Utkarsh Kumar

Pulsar timing arrays have found evidence for a low-frequency gravitational wave background (GWB). Assuming the GWB is produced by supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), the next gravitational wave (GW) signals astronomers anticipate are…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-04-24 Emiko C. Gardiner , Luke Zoltan Kelley , Anna-Malin Lemke , Andrea Mitridate

We examine the nHz gravitational wave (GW) foreground of stars and black holes (BHs) orbiting SgrA* in the Galactic Center. A cusp of stars and BHs generates a continuous GW spectrum below 40 nHz; individual BHs within 1 mpc to SgrA* stick…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-30 Bence Kocsis , Alak Ray , Simon Portegies Zwart

We present a refined estimation of the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) based on observed dual active galactic nuclei (AGNs) together with AGN X-ray luminosity functions, in light of recent Pulsar Timing Array detections of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-14 Katsunori Kusakabe , Yoshiyuki Inoue , Daisuke Toyouchi

The stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB) recently discovered by several pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments is consistent with arising from a population of coalescing super-massive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). The amplitude of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-12-18 Ágnes Kis-Tóth , Zoltán Haiman , Zsolt Frei

Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to gravitational waves from supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries at orbital separations of << 1pc. There is currently an observational paucity of such systems, although they are central figures in…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 Sarah Burke-Spolaor

The amplitude of the detected stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) measured by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) and the discovery of early and over-massive central black holes at high redshift by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-06 D. Martín-González

We study the non-Gaussian features of the gravitational wave (GW) background generated by a population of inspiraling supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. We show that the SMBH GW amplitude distribution (GWAD) features a universal heavy…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-10 Juhan Raidal , Juan Urrutia , Ville Vaskonen , Hardi Veermäe

We model the inspiral of globular clusters (GCs) towards a galactic nucleus harboring a supermassive black hole (SMBH), a leading scenario for the formation of nuclear star clusters. We consider the case of GCs containing either an…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-04-18 Manuel Arca Sedda , Alessia Gualandris

Precision pulsar timing at the level of tens to hundreds of nanoseconds allows detection of nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) at the cores of merging galaxies and, potentially, from exotic…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-03-25 J. M. Cordes , M. A. McLaughlin

Recent Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) results provided strong evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (sGWB), consistent with a population of merging massive black holes (MBHs) at $z<1$. Meanwhile, JWST observations at $z>5$…

Observations have revealed that nearly all galaxies contain supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers. When galaxies merge, these SMBHs form SMBH binaries (SMBHBs) that emit low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs). The incoherent…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2018-08-14 Sarah J. Vigeland , Kristina Islo , Stephen R. Taylor , Justin A. Ellis

Multiple pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have recently reported the first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) of nanohertz frequencies. The signal is expected to be primarily sourced by inspiralling supermassive black hole…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2023-12-13 Gabriela Sato-Polito , Matias Zaldarriaga , Eliot Quataert

A population of super-massive black hole binaries is expected to generate a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the pulsar timing array (PTA) frequency range of $10^{-9}$--$10^{-7}$ Hz. Detection of this signal is a current…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-02-23 Bailey Sykes , Hannah Middleton , Andrew Melatos , Tiziana Di Matteo , Colin DeGraf , Aklant Bhowmick

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in the 10 million to 10 billion $M_\odot$ range form in galaxy mergers, and live in galactic nuclei with large and poorly constrained concentrations of gas and stars. There are currently no…