Fast and Flow-rious: Gravitational Wave Background Bayesian Model Comparison using Normalizing Flows and Nested Sampling

arXiv:2609.38122 · gr-qc, astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.IM · Submitted 2026-09-29 · Read on arXiv

gr-qc, astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.IM

Submitted: 2026-09-29

Updated: 2026-09-29

Code: https://github.com/davecwright3/fast-and-flowrious

Terminology

• Normalizing Flow — 13× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Accuracy — 10× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Normalizing Flows — 10× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• AUC — 9× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Copula — 7× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• pulsar timing arrays — 7× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Calibration — 6× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
• Fidelity — 5× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Phase Transitions — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Adam — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Bayesian Inference — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Gaussian Process — 2× in this paper
• Generative Model — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Anisotropy — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Empirical Coverage — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• National Science Foundation — 1× in this paper
• Non-Gaussianity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
• Comparing recent PTA results on the nanohertz stochastic gravitational wave background
• Stochastic gravitational-wave background search using data from five pulsar timing arrays
• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Impacts of Customized Chromatic Noise Models on Gravitational Wave Analyses
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational Wave Background
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
• The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Piecewise Power-Law Reconstruction of the Gravitational-Wave Background
• Ultra-Low Frequency Gravitational Radiation from Massive Black Hole Binaries
• Gravitational Waves Probe the Coalescence Rate of Massive Black Hole Binaries
• Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Black Hole Binaries: Predictions for LISA and Pulsar Timing Arrays
• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Gravitational-wave cosmology across 29 decades in frequency
• Gravitational waves from inflation
• Gravitational Radiation from First-Order Phase Transitions
• Cosmological Backgrounds of Gravitational Waves
• Finite Populations & Finite Time: The Non-Gaussianity of a Gravitational Wave Background
• Spectral Variance in a Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background From a Binary Population
• New advances in the Gaussian-process approach to pulsar-timing data analysis
• Hyper-efficient model-independent Bayesian method for the analysis of pulsar timing data
• The NANOGrav 15-year Gravitational-Wave Background Methods

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