European Pulsar Timing Array Limits on Continuous Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries

• Published in: arXiv.org 2015-09
• Main Authors: Stanislav Babak, Petiteau, Antoine, Sesana, Alberto, Brem, Patrick, Rosado, Pablo A, Taylor, Stephen R, Lassus, Antoine, Hessels, Jason W T, Bassa, Cees G, Burgay, Marta, R Nicolas Caballero, Champion, David J, Cognard, Ismael, Desvignes, Gregory, Gair, Jonathan R, Guillemot, Lucas, Janssen, Gemma H, Karuppusamy, Ramesh, Kramer, Michael, Lazarus, Patrick, Lee, K J, Lindley Lentati, Liu, Kuo, Mingarelli, Chiara M F, Oslowski, Stefan, Perrodin, Delphine, Possenti, Andrea, Purver, Mark B, Sanidas, Sotiris, Smits, Roy, Stappers, Ben, Theureau, Gilles, Tiburzi, Caterina, Rutger van Haasteren, Vecchio, Alberto, Verbiest, Joris P W
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithms; Bayesian analysis; Binary stars; Gravitation; Gravitational waves; Millisecond pulsars; Pulsars; Supermassive black holes
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1509.02165

We have searched for continuous gravitational wave (CGW) signals produced by individually resolvable, circular supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in the latest EPTA dataset, which consists of ultra-precise timing data on 41 millisecond pulsars. We develop frequentist and Bayesian detection algorithms to search both for monochromatic and frequency-evolving systems. None of the adopted algorithms show evidence for the presence of such a CGW signal, indicating that the data are best described by pulsar and radiometer noise only. Depending on the adopted detection algorithm, the 95\% upper limit on the sky-averaged strain amplitude lies in the range \(6\times 10^{-15}