TY - JOUR
T1 - Multimessenger Gravitational-wave Searches with Pulsar Timing Arrays
T2 - Application to 3C 66B Using the NANOGrav 11-year Data Set
AU - Arzoumanian, Zaven
AU - Baker, Paul T.
AU - Brazier, Adam
AU - Brook, Paul R.
AU - Burke-Spolaor, Sarah
AU - Bécsy, Bence
AU - Charisi, Maria
AU - Chatterjee, Shami
AU - Cordes, James M.
AU - Cornish, Neil J.
AU - Crawford, Fronefield
AU - Cromartie, H. Thankful
AU - Crowter, Kathryn
AU - DeCesar, Megan E.
AU - Demorest, Paul B.
AU - Dolch, Timothy
AU - Elliott, Rodney D.
AU - Ellis, Justin A.
AU - Ferdman, Robert D.
AU - Ferrara, Elizabeth C.
AU - Fonseca, Emmanuel
AU - Garver-Daniels, Nathan
AU - Gentile, Peter A.
AU - Good, Deborah C.
AU - Hazboun, Jeffrey S.
AU - Islo, Kristina
AU - Jennings, Ross J.
AU - Jones, Megan L.
AU - Kaiser, Andrew R.
AU - Kaplan, David L.
AU - Kelley, Luke Zoltan
AU - Key, Joey Shapiro
AU - Lam, Michael T.
AU - W. Lazio, T. Joseph
AU - Levin, Lina
AU - Luo, Jing
AU - Lynch, Ryan S.
AU - Madison, Dustin R.
AU - McLaughlin, Maura A.
AU - Mingarelli, Chiara M.F.
AU - Ng, Cherry
AU - Nice, David J.
AU - Pennucci, Timothy T.
AU - Pol, Nihan S.
AU - Ransom, Scott M.
AU - Ray, Paul S.
AU - Shapiro-Albert, Brent J.
AU - Siemens, Xavier
AU - Simon, Joseph
AU - Spiewak, Renée
AU - The Nanograv Collaboration
PY - 2020/9/10
Y1 - 2020/9/10
N2 - When galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes in their centers may form binaries and emit low-frequency gravitational radiation in the process. In this paper, we consider the galaxy 3C 66B, which was used as the target of the first multimessenger search for gravitational waves. Due to the observed periodicities present in the photometric and astrometric data 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. Since the first pulsar timing array study of 3C 66B, revised models of the source have been published, and timing array sensitivities and techniques have improved dramatically. With these advances, we further constrain the chirp mass of the potential supermassive black hole binary in 3C 66B to less than (1.65 ± 0.02) × 109 M o˙ using data from the NANOGrav 11-year data set. This upper limit provides a factor of 1.6 improvement over previous limits and a factor of 4.3 over the first search done. Nevertheless, the most recent orbital model for the source is still consistent with our limit from pulsar timing array data. In addition, we are able to quantify the improvement made by the inclusion of source properties gleaned from electromagnetic data over "blind"pulsar timing array searches. With these methods, it is apparent that it is not necessary to obtain exact a priori knowledge of the period of a binary to gain meaningful astrophysical inferences.
AB - When galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes in their centers may form binaries and emit low-frequency gravitational radiation in the process. In this paper, we consider the galaxy 3C 66B, which was used as the target of the first multimessenger search for gravitational waves. Due to the observed periodicities present in the photometric and astrometric data 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. Since the first pulsar timing array study of 3C 66B, revised models of the source have been published, and timing array sensitivities and techniques have improved dramatically. With these advances, we further constrain the chirp mass of the potential supermassive black hole binary in 3C 66B to less than (1.65 ± 0.02) × 109 M o˙ using data from the NANOGrav 11-year data set. This upper limit provides a factor of 1.6 improvement over previous limits and a factor of 4.3 over the first search done. Nevertheless, the most recent orbital model for the source is still consistent with our limit from pulsar timing array data. In addition, we are able to quantify the improvement made by the inclusion of source properties gleaned from electromagnetic data over "blind"pulsar timing array searches. With these methods, it is apparent that it is not necessary to obtain exact a priori knowledge of the period of a binary to gain meaningful astrophysical inferences.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85092041657&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ababa1
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ababa1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85092041657
VL - 900
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 2
M1 - 102
ER -