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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

Evidence of a gravitational wave (GW) signal has emerged in pulsar timing array (PTA) data, opening a new window into the nanoHz GW Universe. We explore the physics of GW signals potentially explaining the data, with a primary focus on GW…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-04 Alberto Sesana , Daniel G. Figueroa

Inspiralling supermassive black-hole binaries (SMBHBs) are expected to be the main source of the nanohertz gravitational-wave background (GWB) targeted by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). We provide a simple and general analytic expression for…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-22 Yacine Ali-Haïmoud

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

Stellar-mass black hole binaries (BHBs) in galactic nuclei are gravitationally perturbed by the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) of the host galaxy, potentially inducing strong eccentricity oscillations through the eccentric…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-08-21 Alan M. Knee , Jess McIver , Smadar Naoz , Isobel M. Romero-Shaw , Bao-Minh Hoang , Evgeni Grishin

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

Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments have the potential to unveil continuous gravitational wave (CGW) signals from individual massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). Detecting them in both gravitational waves (GW) and the electromagnetic (EM)…

Recent pulsar timing array results, including the NANOGrav 15-year data set, show evidence for a stochastic gravitational-wave background (GWB) in the nanohertz band. We present a Bayesian framework to compare three possible origins: (i) a…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-28 Mengshen Wang , Zuocheng Zhang , Hua Xu

The NANOGrav Collaboration has recently announced evidence for nHz gravitational waves (GWs), in the form of a Hellings-Downs angular correlation in the common-spectrum process that had been observed previously by them and other Pulsar…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-01-15 John Ellis , Malcolm Fairbairn , Gert Hütsi , Juhan Raidal , Juan Urrutia , Ville Vaskonen , Hardi Veermäe

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…

Wide, highly eccentric ($e>0.9$) compact binaries can naturally arise as progenitors of gravitational wave (GW) mergers. These systems are expected to have a significant population in the mHz band (e.g., $\sim 3-45$ detectable stellar-mass…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-28 Zeyuan Xuan , Smadar Naoz , Alvin K. Y. Li , Bence Kocsis , Erik Petigura , Alan M. Knee , Jess McIver , Kyle Kremer , Will M. Farr

We estimate the merger timescale of spectroscopically-selected, subparsec supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) candidates by comparing their expected contribution to the gravitational wave background (GWB) with the sensitivity of current…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-10-13 Khai Nguyen , Tamara Bogdanovic , Jessie C. Runnoe , Stephen R. Taylor , Alberto Sesana , Michael Eracleous , Steinn Sigurdsson

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

The paucity of observed supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) may imply that the gravitational wave background (GWB) from this population is anisotropic, rendering existing analyses sub-optimal. We present the first constraints on the…

Recent detections of a low-frequency gravitational wave background (GWB) from various pulsar-timing-array (PTA) observations have renewed the interest in the inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), whose population is…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-03-05 Li Hu , Rong-Gen Cai , Shao-Jiang Wang

The most conservative interpretation of the nHz stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) discovered by NANOGrav and other Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) Collaborations is astrophysical, namely that it originates from supermassive black…

The gravitational-wave background from supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) has yet to be detected. This has led to speculations as to whether current pulsar timing array limits are in tension with theoretical predictions. In this…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-01-07 Xing-Jiang Zhu , Weiguang Cui , Eric Thrane

Massive black holes (MBHs) exist in the Galactic center (GC) and other nearby galactic nuclei. As natural outcome of galaxy mergers, some MBHs may have a black hole (BH) companion. In this paper, assuming that the MBHs in the GC and some…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-11-22 Xiao Guo , Qingjuan Yu , Youjun Lu

The advent of next generation radio telescope facilities, such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), will usher in an era where a Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) based search for gravitational waves (GWs) will be able to use hundreds of well timed…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2017-04-19 Yan Wang , Soumya D. Mohanty

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