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Supermassive black hole binary systems (SMBHBs) should be the most powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the Universe. Once Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) detect the stochastic GW background from their cosmic merger history,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-06-26 Nicole M. Khusid , Chiara M. F. Mingarelli , Priyamvada Natarajan , J. Andrew Casey-Clyde , Anna Barnacka

Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) have recently found strong evidence for low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) in the nanohertz frequency regime. As GWs pass, they produce deviations in measured lengths and light-travel times. PTA experiments…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-05-05 Luke Zoltan Kelley

We present a fast and versatile method to calculate the characteristic spectrum $h_c$ of the gravitational wave background (GWB) emitted by a population of eccentric massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). We fit the spectrum of a reference…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2017-07-12 Siyuan Chen , Alberto Sesana , Walter Del Pozzo

Large-area sky surveys show that massive galaxies undergo at least one major merger in a Hubble time. Ongoing pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments are aimed at measuring the gravitational wave (GW) emission from binary supermassive black…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 V. Ravi , J. S. B. Wyithe , R. M. Shannon , G. Hobbs

Observations have revealed that nearly all galaxies contain supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers. When galaxies merge, these SMBHs form SMBH binaries (SMBHBs) that emit low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs). The incoherent…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2018-08-14 Sarah J. Vigeland , Kristina Islo , Stephen R. Taylor , Justin A. Ellis

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

Nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs), detectable via pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), offer a novel avenue to constrain dark energy. Based on cosmological simulations and semi-analytic galaxy…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-10 Qing Yang , Gu-yue Zhang , Yi Huang , Xiao Guo

Strong evidence for an isotropic, Gaussian gravitational wave background (GWB) has been found by multiple pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). The GWB is expected to be sourced by a finite population of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs)…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-05-21 William G. Lamb , Jeremy M. Wachter , Andrea Mitridate , Shashwat C. Sardesai , Bence Bécsy , Emily L. Hagen , Stephen R. Taylor , Luke Zoltan Kelley

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 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

Massive binary black holes (MBBHs) in nearby galactic centers, if any, may be nano-Hertz gravitational wave (GW) sources for pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) to detect. Normally the objective GWs for PTA experiments are approximated as plane…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-11-04 Xiao Guo , Youjun Lu , Qingjuan Yu

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

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are designed to detect the predicted gravitational wave (GW) background produced by a cosmological population of supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. In this contribution I review the physics of such GW…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 A. Sesana

Strong evidence of the existence of the Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background (SGWB) has been reported by the NANOGrav, PPTA, EPTA and CPTA collaborations. The Bayesian posteriors of the Gravitational-Wave Background (GWB) amplitude and…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-07-04 Chao Zhang , Ning Dai , Qing Gao , Yungui Gong , Tong Jiang , Xuchen Lu

The nano-hertz (nHz) stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), generated by unresolved supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), provides a unique probe of their population and its cosmic evolution. In this work, we explore the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-28 Mohit Raj Sah , Suvodip Mukherjee

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

In the summer of 2023, the pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) announced a compelling evidence for the existence of a nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Despite this breakthrough, however, several critical questions remain…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-16 Reginald Christian Bernardo , Kin-Wang Ng

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

We use the Horizon-AGN cosmological simulation to study the properties of supermassive black hole binaries (MBHBs) contributing most to the gravitational wave background (GWB) signal expected in the pulsar timing array (PTA) band. We…

A population of super-massive black hole binaries is expected to generate a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) in the pulsar timing array (PTA) frequency range of $10^{-9}$--$10^{-7}$ Hz. Detection of this signal is a current…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-02-23 Bailey Sykes , Hannah Middleton , Andrew Melatos , Tiziana Di Matteo , Colin DeGraf , Aklant Bhowmick