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Related papers: Testing the binary hypothesis: pulsar timing const…

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Pulsar timing arrays recently found evidence for a gravitational wave background (GWB), likely the stochastic overlap of GWs from many supermassive black hole binaries. Anticipating a continuous gravitational wave (CW) detection from a…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-08 Emiko C. Gardiner , Bence Bécsy , Luke Zoltan Kelley , Neil J. Cornish

Abridged: Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) separated by (sub)-pc scales represent one of the latest stages of hierarchical galaxy assembly. However, many of these objects are hidden behind large columns of gas and dust at the…

Massive black holes are key components of the assembly and evolution of cosmic structures and a number of surveys are currently on-going or planned to probe the demographics of these objects and to gain insight into the relevant physical…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 A. Sesana , A. Vecchio , M. Volonteri

Gravitational Waves (GW) have now been detected from stellar-mass black hole binaries, and the first observations of GW from Massive Black Hole (MBH) Binaries are expected within the next decade. Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA), which can…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-10-06 Luke Zoltan Kelley , Laura Blecha , Lars Hernquist

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…

Supermassive binary black holes (SBBHs) are a natural outcome of galaxy mergers. Here we show that low-frequency ($f \leq 10^{-6}$ Hz) quasi-periodic variability observed from cosmic blazar sources can provide substantial inductive support…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Frank M. Rieger

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

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

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) measure nHz frequency gravitational waves (GWs) generated by orbiting massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) with periods between 0.1-10 yr. Previous studies on the nHz GW background assumed that the inspiral is…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-18 Bence Kocsis , Alberto Sesana

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should be common in galactic nuclei as a result of frequent galaxy mergers. Recently, a large sample of sub-parsec SMBHB candidates was identified as bright periodically variable quasars in optical…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-03-14 M. Charisi , Z. Haiman , D. Schiminovich , D. J. D'Orazio

We consider the information that can be derived about massive black-hole binary populations and their formation history solely from current and possible future pulsar timing array (PTA) results. We use models of the stochastic…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Hannah Middleton , Walter Del Pozzo , Will M. Farr , Alberto Sesana , Alberto Vecchio

We explore orbital implications of the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) binary in UGC4211 for the energy spectrum of stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), measured with pulsar timing. The SMBH binary in UGC4211 has a projected…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-05-10 Tom Broadhurst , Chao Chen , Tao Liu , Kai-Feng Zheng

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are found in the centers of massive galaxies, and galaxy mergers should eventually lead to SMBH mergers. Quasar activity has long been associated with galaxy mergers, so here we investigate if supermassive…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-04-16 J. Andrew Casey-Clyde , Chiara M. F. Mingarelli , Jenny E. Greene , Andy D. Goulding , Siyuan Chen , Jonathan R. Trump

Sub-parsec (sub-pc) binary supermassive black holes (BSBHs) should be common from galaxy mergers, yet direct evidence has been elusive. We present HST/WFC3IR F160W imaging for a sample of 8 candidate sub-pc BSBHs at redshifts z~0.1--0.5, as…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-05-19 Liam Nolan , Ming-Yang Zhuang , Xin Liu , Yu-Ching Chen , Shreya Majumdar , Junyao Li , Yue Shen

Velocity offsets in the broad Balmer lines of quasars and their temporal variations serve as indirect evidence for bound supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) at sub-parsec separations. In this work, we test the SBHB hypothesis for 14…

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will open complementary observational windows on massive black-hole binaries (MBHBs), i.e., with masses in the range $\sim 10^6 - 10^{10}\,$ M$_{\odot}$. While…

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary systems are unavoidable outcomes of galaxy mergers. Their dynamics encode information about their formation and growth, the composition of their host galactic nuclei, the evolution of galaxies, and the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-17 Hanxi Wang , Miguel Zumalacárregui , Bence Kocsis

Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments worldwide recently reported evidence of a nHz stochastic gravitational wave background (sGWB) compatible with the existence of slowly inspiralling massive black hole (MBH) binaries (MBHBs). The shape of…

Coalescing supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are the primary source candidates for low frequency gravitational wave (GW) detections, which could bring us deep insights into galaxy evolutions over cosmic time and violent processes of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-07-04 Minghui Du , Qiong Deng , Yifan Bian , Ziren Luo , Peng Xu