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The Local Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Landscape From Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

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arxiv 1708.03491 v1 pith:ITXAQKTR submitted 2017-08-11 astro-ph.GA

The Local Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Landscape From Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

classification astro-ph.GA
keywords localbinariessmbhbsbackgroundbandblackdetectedgalaxy
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in the 10 million to 10 billion $M_\odot$ range form in galaxy mergers, and live in galactic nuclei with large and poorly constrained concentrations of gas and stars. There are currently no observations of merging SMBHBs--- it is in fact possible that they stall at their final parsec of separation and never merge. While LIGO has detected high frequency GWs, SMBHBs emit GWs in the nanohertz to millihertz band. This is inaccessible to ground-based interferometers, but possible with Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs). Using data from local galaxies in the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey, together with galaxy merger rates from Illustris, we find that there are on average $91\pm7$ sources emitting GWs in the PTA band, and $7\pm2$ binaries which will never merge. Local unresolved SMBHBs can contribute to GW background anisotropy at a level of $\sim20\%$, and if the GW background can be successfully isolated, GWs from at least one local SMBHB can be detected in 10 years.

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Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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  2. Are PTA measurements sensitive to gravitational wave non-Gaussianities?

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    PTA statistical tests cannot distinguish Gaussian and non-Gaussian GWB amplitude distributions in a model-agnostic way after decorrelation.

  3. Exploring the statistical anisotropy of primordial curvature perturbations with pulsar timing arrays

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  5. Exploring Gravitational Wave Signatures Due to Primordial Non-gaussianity and Large Scale Structure Using SKAO

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    Explores SKAO detection of scalar-induced GW backgrounds as probes of primordial non-Gaussianity and parity violation, with LSS cross-correlation to improve SNR.