Efficient prescription to search for linear gravitational wave memory from hyperbolic black hole encounters and its application to the NANOGrav 12.5-year dataset

Abstract

Burst with memory events are potential transient gravitational wave sources for the maturing pulsar timing array (PTA) efforts. We provide a computationally efficient prescription to model pulsar timing residuals induced by supermassive black hole pairs in general relativistic hyperbolic trajectories employing a Keplerian-type parametric solution. Injection studies have been pursued on the resulting bursts with linear GW memory (LGWM) events with simulated datasets to test the performance of our pipeline, followed by its application to the publicly available NANOGrav 12.5-year (NG12.5) dataset. Given the absence of any evidence of LGWM events within the real NG12.5 dataset, we impose $95\%$ upper limits on the PTA signal amplitude as a function of the sky location of the source and certain characteristic frequency ($n$) of the signal. The upper limits are computed using a signal model that takes into account the presence of intrinsic timing noise specific to each pulsar, as well as a common, spatially uncorrelated red noise, alongside the LGWM signal. Our investigations reveal that the $95\%$ upper limits on LGWM amplitude, marginalized over all other parameters, is 3.48 $\pm 0.51\mu$s for $n>3.16$ nHz. This effort should be relevant for constraining both burst and memory events in the upcoming International Pulsar Timing Array data releases.

20 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (27)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
• Search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• Searching for the nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational wave background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I
• The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array III. Search for gravitational wave signals
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational Wave Background
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars
• The gravitational-wave memory effect
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Bayesian Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries
• The NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set: Detector Characterization and Noise Budget
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• The Indian Pulsar Timing Array: First data release
• Non-Gaussian estimates of tensions in cosmological parameters
• Generalized quasi-Keplerian solution for eccentric, non-spinning compact binaries at 4PN order and the associated IMR waveform
• Assessing Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity to Gravitational Wave Bursts with Memory
• Gravitational waves from spinning compact binaries in hyperbolic orbits
• Accurate characterization of the stochastic gravitational-wave background with pulsar timing arrays by likelihood reweighting
• Searching for gravitational wave bursts from cosmic string cusps with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
• Pulsar Timing Perturbations from Galactic Gravitational Wave Bursts with Memory
• Gravitational Waves from Black-Hole Encounters: Prospects for Ground- and Galaxy-Based Observatories
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year data set: A computationally efficient eccentric binary search pipeline and constraints on an eccentric supermassive binary candidate in 3C 66B
• Third order post-Newtonian gravitational radiation from two-body scattering: Instantaneous energy and angular momentum radiation
• Post-Newtonian-accurate pulsar timing array signals induced by inspiralling eccentric binaries: accuracy, computational cost, and single-pulsar search