Population statistics of nanohertz gravitational wave sources
Jiming Yu, Zhen Pan, Xiao Xue, Liang Dai
astro-ph.HE, gr-qc
Submitted: 2026-07-08
Comments: 10 pages, 7 figures, comments are welcomed
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: The recent detection of a nanohertz gravitational wave (GW) background by pulsar timing arrays (PTA) has sparked extensive discussions regarding its origin-whether it arises from astrophysical
Terminology
Abstract
The recent detection of a nanohertz gravitational wave (GW) background by pulsar timing arrays (PTA) has sparked extensive discussions regarding its origin-whether it arises from astrophysical supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) or from primordial GWs generated by various early universe processes. Previous studies suggest that a key discriminant between these two origins is the non-Gaussianity of the GW background prior to the detection of any individual source. In this Letter, we introduce a hierarchical Bayesian inference framework for inferring population properties of GW sources. This approach enables not only the measurement of evidence for different GW origins using PTA data but also the inference of population properties of astrophysical SMBHBs, by optimally leveraging non-Gaussian information in individual bright sources and in power spectrum fluctuations of the GW background.
Sources
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
- The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array III. Search for gravitational wave signals
- Search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
- Searching for the nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational wave background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I
- The Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Astronomer
- The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
- The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The $4.5$-year data release and the noise and stochastic signals of the millisecond pulsar population
- Massive Black Hole Binary Mergers in Dynamical Galactic Environments
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
- Characterising gravitational wave stochastic background anisotropy with Pulsar Timing Arrays
- The spatial correlations between pulsars for interfering sources in Pulsar Timing Array and evidence for gravitational-wave background in NANOGrav 15-year data set
- Statistics of the supermassive black hole gravitational wave background anisotropy
- Gravitational Waves from SMBH Binaries in Light of the NANOGrav 15-Year Data
- Prospects for Future Binary Black Hole GW Studies in Light of PTA Measurements
- The distribution of the gravitational-wave background from supermassive black holes
- Non-Gaussian Statistics of Nanohertz Stochastic Gravitational Waves
- Spectral Variance in a Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background From a Binary Population
- From eccentric binaries to nonstationary gravitational wave backgrounds
- A practical theorem on gravitational-wave background statistics
- Higher-order statistics of the stochastic gravitational wave background from supermassive black hole binaries
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