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Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are anticipated to detect the stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB) from supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) as well as the gravitational waves from individual BBHs. Recently, a common process signal…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-06-21 Yunfeng Chen , Qingjuan Yu , Youjun Lu

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) at the centers of galaxies emit continuous gravitational waves (GWs) at nanohertz frequencies, and ongoing pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments aim to detect the first individual system.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-28 Patrick Horlaville , John J. Ruan , Michael Eracleous , Jaeden Bardati , Jessie C. Runnoe , Daryl Haggard

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 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

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

In this letter we carry out the first systematic investigation of the expected gravitational wave (GW) background generated by supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries in the nHz frequency band accessible to pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). We…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-12 A. Sesana

Massive black-hole binaries, formed when galaxies merge, are among the primary sources of gravitational waves targeted by ongoing Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments and the upcoming space-based LISA interferometer. However, their…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-07-26 Irina Dvorkin , Enrico Barausse

By regularly monitoring the most stable millisecond pulsars over many years, pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are positioned to detect and study correlations in the timing behaviour of those pulsars. Gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive…

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

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) present us with exciting opportunities for multi-messenger science. These systems are thought to form naturally in galaxy mergers and therefore have the potential to produce electromagnetic (EM)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-11-26 Polina Petrov , Stephen R. Taylor , Maria Charisi , Chung-Pei Ma

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

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are placing increasingly stringent constraints on the strain amplitude of continuous gravitational waves emitted by supermassive black hole binaries on subparsec scales. In this paper, we incorporate independent…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-04-08 Katelin Schutz , Chung-Pei Ma

The recent detection of a common-spectrum stochastic signal by multiple pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations has provided tentative evidence for a nanohertz (nHz) stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB). This signal can be…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-01-22 Mohit Raj Sah , Suvodip Mukherjee

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…

Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) are binary systems formed by black holes with mass exceeding millions of solar masses, expected to form and evolve in the nuclei of galaxies. The extreme compact nature of such objects determines a loud…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-06-26 Matteo Bonetti , Alessia Franchini , Bruno Giovanni Galuzzi , Alberto Sesana

Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) observations will detect gravitational waves (GWs) from the early inspiral phase of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) with orbital periods of weeks to years. Current PTA analyses generally assume circular…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-11-26 Sara Manzini , Stanislav Babak

We develop a unified framework for testing gravity beyond General Relativity (GR) with continuous gravitational waves (CWs) from individual supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). These long-lived, nearly monochromatic nanohertz signals…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-05-08 Qinyuan Zheng , Bjorn Larsen , Ellis Eisenberg , Chiara M. F. Mingarelli

Gravitational wave (GW) searches using pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are commonly assumed to be limited to a GW frequency of $\lesssim 4\times 10^{-7}$Hz given by the Nyquist rate associated with the average observational cadence of $2$ weeks…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-04-01 Xuan Tao , Yan Wang , Soumya D. Mohanty

Massive stellar origin black hole binaries (SBHBs), originating from stars above the pair-instability mass gap, are primary candidates for multiband gravitational wave (GW) observations. Here we study the possibility to use them as…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-02-16 Niccolò Muttoni , Alberto Mangiagli , Alberto Sesana , Danny Laghi , Walter Del Pozzo , David Izquierdo-Villalba , Mattia Rosati

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