NANOGrav Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Circular Orbits

Abstract

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) project currently observes 43 pulsars using the Green Bank and Arecibo radio telescopes. In this work we use a subset of 17 pulsars timed for a span of roughly five years (2005--2010). We analyze these data using standard pulsar timing models, with the addition of time-variable dispersion measure and frequency-variable pulse shape terms. Within the timing data, we perform a search for continuous gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries in circular orbits using robust frequentist and Bayesian techniques. 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 dataset we place a 95% upper limit on the sky-averaged strain amplitude of $h_0\lesssim 3.8\times 10^{-14}$ at a frequency of 10 nHz. Furthermore, we place 95% \emph{all sky} lower limits on the luminosity distance to such gravitational wave sources finding that the $d_L\gtrsim 425$ Mpc for sources at a frequency of 10 nHz and chirp mass $10^{10}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$. 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 $\sim$4 over the sky-averaged sensitivity. Finally we place limits on the coalescence rate of the most massive supermassive black hole binaries.

21 pages, 9 figures. Matches version submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (12)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• A massive binary black-hole system in OJ287 and a test of general relativity
• Upper bounds on the low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background from pulsar timing observations: current limits and future prospects
• Gravitational waves from resolvable massive black hole binary systems and observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Assessing the Role of Spin Noise in the Precision Timing of Millisecond Pulsars
• On Pulsar Distance Measurements and their Uncertainties
• On measuring the gravitational-wave background using Pulsar Timing Arrays
• The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
• Accelerating pulsar timing data analysis

Cited by in corpus (32)

• The Local Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Landscape From Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• Time-domain Implementation of the Optimal Cross-Correlation Statistic for Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background Searches in Pulsar Timing Data
• The NANOGrav Nine-Year Data Set: Excess Noise in Millisecond Pulsar Arrival Times
• Constraining the Solution to the Last Parsec Problem with Pulsar Timing
• Searching for continuous Gravitational Waves in the second data release of the International Pulsar Timing Array
• Pulsars and Gravity
• Pulsar timing can constrain primordial black holes in the LIGO mass window
• Detection and localization of single-source gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays
• Prompt Electromagnetic Transients from Binary Black Hole Mergers
• Dynamical evolution of cosmic supermassive binary black holes and their gravitational wave radiation
• Low-rank approximations for large stationary covariance matrices, as used in the Bayesian and generalized-least-squares analysis of pulsar-timing data
• Timing of five millisecond pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey
• Detection and localization of continuous gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays: the role of pulsar terms
• The NANOGrav 15-year Gravitational-Wave Background Methods
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• Constraining alternative polarization states of gravitational waves from individual black hole binaries using pulsar timing arrays
• Pulsar Timing Perturbations from Galactic Gravitational Wave Bursts with Memory
• On using inspiralling supermassive binary black holes in the PTA frequency band as standard sirens to constrain dark energy
• Broad Iron Emission from Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Observed by Chandra
• Noise in pulsar timing arrays
• A comparative analysis of pulse time-of-arrival creation methods
• On Detecting Nearby Nano-Hertz Gravitational Wave Sources via Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Post-Newtonian-accurate pulsar timing array signals induced by inspiralling eccentric binaries: accuracy, computational cost, and single-pulsar search
• Efficient Bayesian inference and model selection for continuous gravitational waves in pulsar timing array data
• Reducing instrumental errors in Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data
• A Detection of Red Noise in PSR J1824$-$2452A and Projections for PSR B1937+21 using NICER X-ray Timing Data
• Damping of long wavelength gravitational waves by the intergalactic medium
• Rapid Construction of Joint Pulsar Timing Array Datasets: The Lite Method
• Constraining Fundamental Constant Variations from Ultralight Dark Matter with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Statistical Analyses for NANOGrav 5-year Timing Residuals
• Upper limits on microhertz gravitational waves from supermassive black-hole binaries using PSR J1909-3744 data from the second IPTA data release