Future microhertz detections combined with nanohertz pulsar terms can serve as gravity echoes to measure supermassive black hole binary inspiral rates from hundreds to thousands of years in the past.
Pulsar Timing Array Observations of Massive Black Hole Binaries
9 Pith papers cite this work, alongside 40 external citations. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Pulsar timing is a promising technique for detecting low frequency sources of gravitational waves. Historically the focus has been on the detection of diffuse stochastic backgrounds, such as those formed from the superposition of weak signals from a population of binary black holes. More recently, attention has turned to members of the binary population that are nearer and brighter, which stand out from the crowd and can be individually resolved. Here we show that the timing data from an array of pulsars can be used to recover the physical parameters describing an individual black hole binary to good accuracy, even for moderately strong signals. A novel aspect of our analysis is that we include the distance to each pulsar as a search parameter, which allows us to utilize the full gravitational wave signal. This doubles the signal power, improves the sky location determination by an order of magnitude, and allows us to extract the mass and the distance to the black hole binary.
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A standardizing coordinate transform turns PTA Fourier coefficients into near-standard normals so HMC/NUTS on GPU recovers NANOGrav-scale posteriors in ~15 minutes.
A GLRT and associated T-statistic for evolving SMBHB signals in PTA data with red noise, using dimensionality reduction and PSO, shown in simulations to reach 100% detection at 0.06 FAP for a specific source in a 30-pulsar array.
Targeted PTA searches for CWs from 114 AGN in NANOGrav 15 yr data yield no detections, factor-of-two tighter limits than all-sky searches, and updated constraints ruling out part of the parameter space for a binary in 3C 66B.
Massive black hole binary mergers produce orphaned low-frequency signals in PTA pulsar terms that can be stacked for archival multiband gravitational-wave detection.
A hierarchical Bayesian inference framework combining free-spectrum reconstruction with population-level likelihoods distinguishes finite SMBHB populations from Gaussian primordial GWB using mock PTA data.
Beyond-GR polarization modes in a single supermassive black hole binary show up linearly (not quadratically) in pulsar-timing cross-correlations, massive-graviton dispersion shifts antenna patterns and pulsar-term phases, and most parity-violating birefringence is suppressed at nanohertz frequencies
Simulations of PTA data show that a full gravitational-wave signal template achieves the highest Bayes factors and most robust parameter estimation for individual supermassive black hole binaries compared to an Earth-term template and a novel Spike Pixel cross-correlation model.
Simulations of continuous-wave searches show that PTA data first constrain GW frequency and strain amplitude together, then sky location, with chirp mass and inclination following later for evolving sources, with precision depending on source frequency and sky position.
citing papers explorer
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Gravity Echoes from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
Future microhertz detections combined with nanohertz pulsar terms can serve as gravity echoes to measure supermassive black hole binary inspiral rates from hundreds to thousands of years in the past.
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A new framework for lightning-fast gravitational wave analysis of pulsar timing data
A standardizing coordinate transform turns PTA Fourier coefficients into near-standard normals so HMC/NUTS on GPU recovers NANOGrav-scale posteriors in ~15 minutes.
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Red noise and evolving signals: a complete frequentist approach to supermassive black hole binary searches with pulsar timing array
A GLRT and associated T-statistic for evolving SMBHB signals in PTA data with red noise, using dimensionality reduction and PSO, shown in simulations to reach 100% detection at 0.06 FAP for a specific source in a 30-pulsar array.
-
The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Targeted Searches for Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
Targeted PTA searches for CWs from 114 AGN in NANOGrav 15 yr data yield no detections, factor-of-two tighter limits than all-sky searches, and updated constraints ruling out part of the parameter space for a binary in 3C 66B.
-
Archival Multiband Gravitational-Wave Signals from Massive Black Hole Binary Mergers
Massive black hole binary mergers produce orphaned low-frequency signals in PTA pulsar terms that can be stacked for archival multiband gravitational-wave detection.
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Population statistics of nanohertz gravitational wave sources
A hierarchical Bayesian inference framework combining free-spectrum reconstruction with population-level likelihoods distinguishes finite SMBHB populations from Gaussian primordial GWB using mock PTA data.
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Testing General Relativity with Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
Beyond-GR polarization modes in a single supermassive black hole binary show up linearly (not quadratically) in pulsar-timing cross-correlations, massive-graviton dispersion shifts antenna patterns and pulsar-term phases, and most parity-violating birefringence is suppressed at nanohertz frequencies
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Expectations for the first supermassive black-hole binary resolved by PTAs II: Milestones for binary characterization
Simulations of continuous-wave searches show that PTA data first constrain GW frequency and strain amplitude together, then sky location, with chirp mass and inclination following later for evolving sources, with precision depending on source frequency and sky position.
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Expectations for the first supermassive black-hole binary resolved by PTAs I: Model efficacy
Simulations of PTA data show that a full gravitational-wave signal template achieves the highest Bayes factors and most robust parameter estimation for individual supermassive black hole binaries compared to an Earth-term template and a novel Spike Pixel cross-correlation model.