CONSTRAINING THE COALESCENCE RATE OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK-HOLE BINARIES USING PULSAR TIMING

2011/03/01 by Z. L. Wen, Fredrick Jenet, F. A. Jenet +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Binary number #Binary pulsar #Coalescence (physics) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitational wave #Millisecond pulsar #Parameter space #Physics #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Redshift #Statistics #Supermassive black hole #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/730/1/29

published as Published in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ, 2011, 730, 29)

openalex publication_date 2011/03/01 · arxiv created 2011/03/14 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Pulsar timing observations are used to place constraints on the rate of coalescence of supermassive black-hole (SMBH) binaries as a function of mass and redshift. In contrast to the indirect constraints obtained from other techniques, pulsar timing observations provide a direct constraint on the black-hole merger rate. This is possible since pulsar timing is sensitive to the gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by these sources in the final stages of their evolution. We find that upper bounds calculated from the recently published Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data are just above theoretical predictions for redshifts below 10. In the future, with improved timing precision and longer data spans, we show that a non-detection of GWs will rule out some of the available parameter space in a particular class of SMBH binary merger models. We also show that if we can time a set of pulsars to 10 ns timing accuracy, for example, using the proposed Square Kilometre Array, it should be possible to detect one or more individual SMBH binary systems.

Citations

• A Survey of [CLC][ITAL]z[/ITAL][/CLC] > 5.8 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Discovery of Three New Quasars and the Spatial Density of Luminous Quasars at [CLC][ITAL]z[/ITAL][/CLC] ∼ 6
• Low‐Frequency Gravitational Radiation from Coalescing Massive Black Hole Binaries in Hierarchical Cosmologies
• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Gravitational wave experiments and early universe cosmology
• The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array Project
• Evolution of the Frequency of Luminous (≥ L_V*) Close Galaxy Pairs at z < 1.2 in the COSMOS Field

Cited by

• Effect of small interpulsar distances in stochastic gravitational wave background searches with pulsar timing arrays

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• Insights on the astrophysics of supermassive black hole binaries from pulsar timing observations
• Pulsar timing array detections of supermassive binary black holes: implications from the detected common process signal and beyond