The NANOGrav 11 yr Data Set: Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
2019
Observations indicate that nearly all galaxies contain
supermassive black holesat their centers. When galaxies merge, their component black holes form SMBH binaries (SMBHBs), which emit low-frequency
gravitational waves(GWs) that can be detected by
pulsar timing arrays. We have searched the North American Nanohertz Observatory for
Gravitational Waves11 yr data set for GWs from individual SMBHBs in
circular orbits. As we did not find strong evidence for GWs in our data, we placed 95% upper limits on the strength of GWs from such sources. At f_(gw) = 8 nHz, we placed a sky-averaged upper limit of h_0 1.6 x 10^9 M⊙ emitting GWs with f_(gw) = 2.8–317.8 nHz in the
Virgo Cluster. Finally, we compared our strain upper limits to simulated populations of SMBHBs, based on galaxies in the Two Micron All-Sky Survey and merger rates from the Illustris cosmological simulation project, and found that only 34 out of 75,000 realizations of the local universe contained a detectable source.
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