The local nanohertz gravitational-wave landscape from supermassive black hole binaries

By C. Mingarelli, T. Lazio, A. Sesana, Jenny E. Greene, J. Ellis, Chung-Pei Ma, S. Croft, S. Burke-Spolaor, S. Taylor. 2017

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Supermassive black hole binary systems form in galaxy mergers and reside in galactic nuclei with large and poorly constrained concentrations of gas and stars. These systems emit nanohertz gravitational waves that will be detectable by pulsar timing arrays. Here we estimate the properties of the local nanohertz gravitational-wave landscape that includes individual supermassive black hole binaries emitting continuous gravitational waves and the gravitational-wave background that they generate. Using the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey, together with galaxy merger rates from the Illustris simulation project, we find that there are on average 91 ± 7 continuous nanohertz gravitational-wave sources, and 7 ± 2 binaries that will never merge, within 225 Mpc. These local unresolved gravitational-wave sources can generate a departure from an isotropic gravitational-wave background at a level of about 20 per cent, and if the cosmic gravitational-wave background can be successfully isolated, gravitational waves from at least one local supermassive black hole binary could be detected in 10 years with pulsar timing arrays.We calculate the continuous nanohertz gravitational-wave emission from individual supermassive black hole binaries and the gravitational-wave background they generate, which will be observable with pulsar timing arrays.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af8874dbc006b7c7cb905fb365f189b5a3f74c80

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. G. Hobbs
2. R. Shannon
3. R. Manchester
4. S. Burke-Spolaor
5. D. R. Lorimer
6. M. Bailes
7. X. Siemens
8. K. Chatziioannou

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. G. Hobbs
2. X. Siemens
3. M. Bailes
4. Ken D. Olum
5. S. Burke-Spolaor
6. R. Shannon
7. C. Unal
8. Chung-Pei Ma

Citations in the corpus

• Search for an Isotropic Gravitational-wave Background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (2023, background): “Future observations in the high signal-to-noise regime of the GWB may reveal anisotropy resulting from an unresolved local population of SMBHBs (Taylor & Gair 2013; Mingarelli et al. 2017).”
• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational-wave Background (2023, methodology): “Versions of the semianalytic model approach have also been applied to catalogs of specific galaxies or quasars from observations (Rosado & Sesana 2014; Simon et al. 2014; Mingarelli et al. 2017; Casey-Clyde et al. 2022).”
• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background (2023, background): “…be the case for a GWB generated by a SMBHB population (Mingarelli et al. 2013; Taylor & Gair 2013; Cornish & Sesana 2013; Mingarelli & Sidery 2014; Mingarelli et al. 2017; Roebber & Holder 2017)—the HD template is effective for detecting even anisotropic GWBs in all but the most extreme…”