Massive Black Hole Binary Mergers in Dynamical Galactic Environments

Understand

Gravitational Waves (GW) have now been detected from stellar-mass black hole binaries, and the first observations of GW from Massive Black Hole (MBH) Binaries are expected within the next decade.

• Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA), which can measure the years long periods of GW from MBHB, have excluded many standard predictions for the amplitude of a stochastic GW Background (GWB).
• We use coevolved populations of MBH and galaxies from hydrodynamic, cosmological simulations ('Illustris') to calculate a predicted GWB.
• The most advanced predictions so far have included binary hardening mechanisms from individual environmental processes.