Gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries in circular orbits: limits from the North American nanohertz observatory for gravitational waves
- Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology and X-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)
- California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201 (United States)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
- Department of Physics, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26505 (United States)
- Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, University of Texas at Brownsville, Brownsville, TX 78520 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91106 (United States)
We perform a search for continuous gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries using robust frequentist and Bayesian techniques. We augment standard pulsar timing models with the addition of time-variable dispersion measure and frequency variable pulse shape terms. We apply our techniques to the Five Year Data Release from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. We find that there is no evidence for the presence of a detectable continuous gravitational wave; however, we can use these data to place the most constraining upper limits to date on the strength of such gravitational waves. Using the full 17 pulsar data set we place a 95% upper limit on the strain amplitude of h {sub 0} ≲ 3.0 × 10{sup –14} at a frequency of 10 nHz. Furthermore, we place 95% sky-averaged lower limits on the luminosity distance to such gravitational wave sources, finding that d{sub L} ≳ 425 Mpc for sources at a frequency of 10 nHz and chirp mass 10{sup 10} M {sub ☉}. We find that for gravitational wave sources near our best timed pulsars in the sky, the sensitivity of the pulsar timing array is increased by a factor of ∼four over the sky-averaged sensitivity. Finally we place limits on the coalescence rate of the most massive supermassive black hole binaries.
- OSTI ID:
- 22370410
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 794, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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