Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries in light of the NANOGrav 15-year data

John Ellis; Malcolm Fairbairn; Gert Hütsi; Juhan Raidal; Juan Urrutia; Ville Vaskonen; Hardi Veermäe

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L021302

Letter

Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries in light of the NANOGrav 15-year data

John Ellis ^1,2,3,*, Malcolm Fairbairn^2,†, Gert Hütsi^1,‡, Juhan Raidal ^1,§, Juan Urrutia ^1,4,∥, Ville Vaskonen^1,5,6,¶, and Hardi Veermäe ^1,**

¹Keemilise ja Bioloogilise Füüsika Instituut, Rävala puiestee 10, 10143 Tallinn, Estonia
²Physics Department, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
³Theoretical Physics Department, CERN, CH 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
⁴Department of Cybernetics, Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia tee 21, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia
⁵Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy
⁶Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Padova, Via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy

^*john.ellis@cern.ch
^†malcolm.fairbairn@kcl.ac.uk
^‡gert.hutsi@kbfi.ee
^§juhan.raidal@student.manchester.ac.uk
^∥juan.urrutia@kbfi.ee
^¶ville.vaskonen@pd.infn.it
^**hardi.veermae@cern.ch

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Phys. Rev. D 109, L021302 – Published 10 January, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L021302

Abstract

The NANOGrav and other pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) have recently announced evidence for nHz gravitational waves (GWs) that may originate from supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. The spectral index of the GW signal differs from that predicted for binary evolution by GW emission alone, and we show that environmental effects such as dynamical friction with gas, stars, and dark matter improve the consistency of the SMBH binary model with the PTA data. We comment on the possible implications of environmental effects for PTA observations of fluctuations in the GW frequency spectrum and measurements of GWs at higher frequencies.

Physical Review D

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Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries in light of the NANOGrav 15-year data

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Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries in light of the NANOGrav 15-year data

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