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Constraints on the Dynamical Environments of Supermassive Black-Hole Binaries Using Pulsar-Timing Arrays

Stephen R. Taylor1,*, Joseph Simon2, and Laura Sampson3

  • 1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91106, USA
  • 2Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee Wisconsin 53201, USA
  • 3Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, 2131 Tech Drive, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

  • *Stephen.R.Taylor@jpl.nasa.gov
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 181102 – Published 3 May, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.181102

Abstract

We introduce a technique for gravitational-wave analysis, where Gaussian process regression is used to emulate the strain spectrum of a stochastic background by training on population-synthesis simulations. This leads to direct Bayesian inference on astrophysical parameters. For pulsar timing arrays specifically, we interpolate over the parameter space of supermassive black-hole binary environments, including three-body stellar scattering, and evolving orbital eccentricity. We illustrate our approach on mock data, and assess the prospects for inference with data similar to the NANOGrav 9-yr data release.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 181102– Published 3 May, 2017
  • Received 9 December 2016
Article part of CHORUS

© 2017 American Physical Society

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