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Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments have entered a new era with evidence for a nanoHertz gravitational wave background (GWB). This review describes the physics of detection, detailing the noise models and cross-correlation techniques…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-01 C. M. F. Mingarelli , J. A. Casey-Clyde , Y. T. Chang , E. Eisenberg , F. Hutchison , N. Khusid , B. Larsen , A. Moran , F. Semenzato , L. Willson , Q. Zheng

By inferring the gravitational wave background (GWB) from a population of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) enable the study of massive black holes. In many ways, PTAs manifest the promise of a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-16 Nima Laal , Stephen R. Taylor , Cayenne Matt , Kayhan Gultekin

In this paper we attempt to investigate the nature of the first gravitational wave (GW) signal to be detected by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs): will it be an individual, resolved supermassive black hole binary (SBHB), or a stochastic…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-23 Pablo A. Rosado , Alberto Sesana , Jonathan Gair

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are expected to emit continuous gravitational waves in the pulsar timing array (PTA) frequency band ($10^{-9}$--$10^{-7}$ Hz). The development of data analysis techniques aimed at efficient…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-04 Justin Ellis , Xavier Siemens , Jolien Creighton

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in using pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) as gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. To date, that interest has focused mainly on three particularly promising source types: supermassive--black-hole…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2014-02-26 Curt Cutler , Sarah Burke-Spolaor , Michele Vallisneri , Joseph Lazio , Walid Majid

Using public pulse time-of-arrival data from five pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), we search for a stationary, isotropic, and unpolarized nHz stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB). This analysis is more sensitive than previous…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-29 Wang-Wei Yu , Bruce Allen

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

Fermi LAT observations of gamma-ray pulsars can be used to build a pulsar timing array (PTA) experiment to search for gravitational wave (GW) signals at nanohertz frequencies. At those frequencies, the dominant signal is expected to be a…

Long-term precise timing of Galactic millisecond pulsars holds great promise for measuring the long-period (months-to-years) astrophysical gravitational waves. Several gravitational-wave observational programs, called Pulsar Timing Arrays…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Rutger van Haasteren , Yuri Levin , Patrick McDonald , Tingting Lu

Pulsar timing arrays are now setting increasingly tight limits on the gravitational wave background from binary supermassive black holes. But as upper limits grow more constraining, what can be implied about galaxy evolution? We investigate…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-07-20 Joseph Simon , Sarah Burke-Spolaor

We present an analytic model to describe the supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) merger rate in the Universe with astrophysical observables: galaxy stellar mass function, pair fraction, merger timescale and black hole - host galaxy…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-25 Siyuan Chen , Alberto Sesana , Christopher J. Conselice

This paper presents a technique to search for supermassive black hole binaries (MBHBs) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The search is based on the peculiar properties of merging galaxies that are found in a mock galaxy catalog from…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-03-06 Pablo A. Rosado , Alberto Sesana

One of the imminent science goals of pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) is the detection of a continuous gravitational wave (CGW) emitted by an individual supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). SMBHBs that cause CGWs with GW frequencies…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-02-18 Kathrin Grunthal , Nataliya Porayko , David J. Champion , Michael Kramer

Statistical anisotropy in the nanohertz-frequency gravitational-wave background (GWB) is expected to be detected by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) in the near future. By developing a frequentist statistical framework that intrinsically…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-12-14 Nihan Pol , Stephen R. Taylor , Joseph D. Romano

One of the most promising targets for Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) is identifying an individual supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) out of the population of binaries theorized to produce a gravitational wave background (GWB). In this…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-21 Levi Schult , Polina Petrov , Stephen R. Taylor , Nihan Pol , Nima Laal , Maria Charisi , Chung-Pei Ma

Recently, Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations have detected a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) at nano-Hz frequencies, with Domain Wall networks (DWs) proposed as potential sources. To be cosmologically viable, they must…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-01-30 Yann Gouttenoire , Edoardo Vitagliano

The steadily improving sensitivity of pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) suggests that gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) systems in the nearby universe will be de- tectable sometime during the next decade.…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-03-07 Joseph Simon , Abigail Polin , Andrea Lommen , Ben Stappers , Lee Samuel Finn , F A Jenet , B Christy

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 (PTAs) have recently found strong evidence for low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) in the nanohertz frequency regime. As GWs pass, they produce deviations in measured lengths and light-travel times. PTA experiments…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-05-05 Luke Zoltan Kelley

Several pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments such as NANOGrav and PPTA recently reported evidence of a gravitational wave (GW) background at nano-Hz frequency band. This signal can originate from scalar-induced gravitational waves (SIGW)…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-04 Junsong Cang , Yu Gao , Yiming Liu , Sichun Sun