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

Understand

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.