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arxiv: 1008.1782 · v2 · pith:JBM3VG4Jnew · submitted 2010-08-10 · 🌌 astro-ph.HE · gr-qc

Pulsar Timing Array Observations of Massive Black Hole Binaries

classification 🌌 astro-ph.HE gr-qc
keywords binaryblackholepulsartimingallowsarraydistance
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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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Cited by 6 Pith papers

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    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.

  4. Testing General Relativity with Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

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    A framework is developed to test beyond-GR effects in nanohertz continuous waves from individual SMBHBs, deriving modified inter-pulsar correlations, antenna responses, and phase delays for three deviation classes, va...

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    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 prec...

  6. Expectations for the first supermassive black-hole binary resolved by PTAs I: Model efficacy

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    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-...