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An enormous number of compact binary systems, spanning from stellar to supermassive levels, emit substantial gravitational waves during their final evolutionary stages, thereby creating a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). We…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-12-05 Zhencheng Li , Zhen Jiang , Xi-Long Fan , Yun Chen , Liang Gao , Qi Guo , Shenghua Yu

The gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) are long sought by pulsar timing array experiments (PTAs), in the forms of both a stochastic GW background (GWB) and individual sources. The evidence for a GWB was…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-09-27 Yunfeng Chen , Qingjuan Yu , Youjun Lu

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are on the verge of detecting low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). With continued observations of a large sample of millisecond pulsars, PTAs will reach this…

Anisotropies in the nanohertz gravitational-wave background are a compelling next target for pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). Measurements or informative upper limits to the anisotropies are expected in the near future and can offer important…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-26 Gabriela Sato-Polito , Marc Kamionkowski

Following the recent evidence for a gravitational wave (GW) background found by pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments, the next major science milestone is resolving individual supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). The detection of…

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

The astrophysical gravitational wave background in the nanohertz (nHz) band is expected to be primarily composed of the superposition of signals from binaries of supermassive black holes. The spatial discreteness of these sources introduces…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-08-28 Giulia Cusin , Cyril Pitrou , Martin Pijnenburg , Alberto Sesana

We introduce a technique for gravitational-wave analysis, where Gaussian process regression is used to emulate the strain spectrum of a stochastic background using population-synthesis simulations. This leads to direct Bayesian inference on…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-05-10 Stephen R. Taylor , Joseph Simon , Laura Sampson

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

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are approaching the sensitivity required to resolve gravitational waves (GWs) from individual supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. However, the large uncertainty in source localization will make the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-26 Niccolo Veronesi , Maria Charisi , Stephen R Taylor , Jessie Runnoe , Daniel J D'Orazio

The stochastic gravitational wave background produced by supernovas, magnetars and merger of binaries constituted by a pair of compact objects is reviewed and updated. The merger of systems composed by two black holes dominates by far the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-01-28 José Antonio de Freitas Pacheco

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) may eventually be able to detect not only the stochastic gravitational-wave (GW) background of SMBH binaries, but also individual, particularly massive binaries whose signals stick out above the background. In…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-17 Takamitsu L. Tanaka , Zoltán Haiman

Results from pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) show evidence of a gravitational wave background (GWB) consistent with a population of unresolved supermassive black hole binaries (BHBs). The observed spectrum shows a flattening at lower…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-12 Federica Fastidio , Elisa Bortolas , Alessia Gualandris , Alberto Sesana , Justin Read , Walter Dehnen

The detection of gravitational waves from the merger of binary black holes by the LIGO Collaboration has opened a new window to astrophysics. With the sensitivities of ground based detectors in the coming years we can only detect the local…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-06-28 Ilias Cholis

We consider the inverse problem in pulsar timing array (PTA) analysis, investigating what astrophysical information about the underlying massive black hole binary (MBHB) population can be recovered from the detection of a stochastic…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-07-12 Siyuan Chen , Hannah Middleton , Alberto Sesana , Walter Del Pozzo , Alberto Vecchio

Several Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations have recently found evidence for a gravitational wave background (GWB) permeating our galaxy. The origin of this background is still unknown. Indeed, while the gravitational wave emission…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-07-12 Anna-Malin Lemke , Andrea Mitridate , Kyle A. Gersbach

Pulsars are very stable clocks in space which have many applications to problems in physics and astrophysics. Observations of double-neutron-star binary systems have given the first observational evidence for the existence of gravitational…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2010-04-22 R. N. Manchester

Massive black hole binaries, with masses in the range 1E3-1E8 Msun, are expected to be the most powerful sources of gravitational radiation at mHz frequencies, and hence are among the primary targets for the planned Laser Interferometer…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 A. Sesana , F. Haardt , P. Madau , M. Volonteri

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are expected to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from individual low-redshift (z<1.5) compact supermassive (M>10^9 Msun) black hole (SMBH) binaries with orbital periods of approx. 0.1 - 10 yrs. Identifying the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Takamitsu Tanaka , Kristen Menou , Zoltán Haiman

An astrophysical population of supermassive black hole binaries is thought to be the strongest source of gravitational waves in the frequency range covered by Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs). A potential cause for concern is that the standard…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2014-01-23 Neil J. Cornish , A. Sesana

We present a comprehensive framework for predicting the detection prospects of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) by future gravitational wave (GW) observatories, examining both space-borne detectors (LISA, Taiji, TianQin) and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-02-09 Katsunori Kusakabe , Yoshiyuki Inoue , Daisuke Toyouchi , Keitaro Takahashi