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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

The merger of a super-massive binary black hole (SBBH) is one of the most extreme events in the universe with a huge amount of energy released by gravitational radiation. Although the characteristic gravitational wave (GW) frequency around…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-14 Naoki Seto

While pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have reported evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB), the detection of continuous gravitational waves (GWs) from a confirmed supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) would…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-13 Li-Wen Tian , Yan-Chen Bi , Yu-Mei Wu , Qing-Guo Huang

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

The recent discovery of the stochastic gravitational-wave background via pulsar timing arrays will likely be followed by the detection of individual black hole binaries that stand out above the background. However, to confidently claim the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-02-26 Bence Bécsy , Neil J. Cornish , Polina Petrov , Xavier Siemens , Stephen R. Taylor , Sarah J. Vigeland , Caitlin A. Witt

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

We propose a novel methodology to select host galaxy candidates of future pulsar timing array (PTA) detections of resolved gravitational waves (GWs) from massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). The method exploits the physical dependence of…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-02-20 Janna M. Goldstein , Alberto Sesana , A. Miguel Holgado , John Veitch

The direct detection of Gravitational Waves (GWs) by Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) is very likely within the next decade. While the stochastic GW background is a promising candidate for detection it is also possible that single resolvable…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-15 Justin Ellis

Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations reported evidence of a nano-Hz stochastic gravitational wave background (sGWB) compatible with an adiabatically inspiraling population of massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). Despite the large…

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 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

With pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) having observed a gravitational wave background (GWB) at nanohertz frequencies, the focus of the field is shifting towards determining and characterizing its origin. While the primary candidate is a…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2025-09-10 Kyle A. Gersbach , Stephen R. Taylor , Bence Bécsy , Anna-Malin Lemke , Andrea Mitridate , Nihan Pol

State-of-the-art searches for gravitational waves (GWs) in pulsar timing array (PTA) datasets model the signal as an isotropic, Gaussian and stationary process described by a power-law. In practice, none of these properties are expected to…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-03-25 Serena Valtolina , Golam Shaifullah , Anuradha Samajdar , Alberto Sesana

The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the nanohertz (nHz) regime, detectable by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), provides a promising probe of the cosmic population of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). These binaries…

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

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

Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) experiments are expected to be sensitive to gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by individual supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) inspiralling along eccentric orbits. We compare the computational cost of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-07-03 Abhimanyu Susobhanan

An important next step for pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) is to measure anisotropies in the gravitational wave background (GWB) at $\sim$ nano-Hz frequencies. We calculate the expected GWB anisotropies using empirically calibrated models for…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-20 Meng-Xiang Lin , Adam Lidz , Chung-Pei Ma

Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are a natural outcome of galaxy mergers and should form frequently in galactic nuclei. Sub-parsec binaries can be identified from their bright electromagnetic emission, e.g., Active Galactic Nuclei…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-01-05 Maria Charisi , Stephen R. Taylor , Jessie Runnoe , Tamara Bogdanovic , Jonathan R. Trump

The black hole merging rates inferred after the gravitational-wave detection by Advanced LIGO/VIRGO and the relatively high mass of the progenitors are consistent with models of dark matter made of massive primordial black holes (PBH). PBH…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-05-30 Sebastien Clesse , Juan García-Bellido