Multi-Messenger Gravitational Wave Searches with Pulsar Timing Arrays: Application to 3C66B Using the NANOGrav 11-year Data Set

Understand

When galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes in their centers may form binaries and, during the process of merger, emit low-frequency gravitational radiation in the process.

• In this paper we consider the galaxy 3C66B, which was used as the target of the first multi-messenger search for gravitational waves.
• Due to the observed periodicities present in the photometric and astrometric data of the source of the source, it has been theorized to contain a supermassive black hole binary.
• Its apparent 1.05-year orbital period would place the gravitational wave emission directly in the pulsar timing band.