# Testing the binary hypothesis: pulsar timing constraints on supermassive black hole binary candidates

## TL;DR

This study uses pulsar timing constraints to evaluate supermassive black hole binary candidates identified in large quasar surveys, finding that most are likely false positives and that current gravitational wave limits challenge their existence.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis linking quasar variability candidates with gravitational wave background constraints, highlighting the potential and limitations of pulsar timing arrays in SMBHB detection.

## Key findings

- Implied gravitational wave background exceeds PTA limits before correction.
- Correcting for biases reduces the tension but still exceeds limits.
- Bayesian analysis favors false positive hypothesis over SMBHB hypothesis.

## Abstract

The advent of time domain astronomy is revolutionizing our understanding of the Universe. Programs such as the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey (CRTS) or the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) surveyed millions of objects for several years, allowing variability studies on large statistical samples. The inspection of $\approx$250k quasars in CRTS resulted in a catalogue of 111 potentially periodic sources, put forward as supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) candidates. A similar investigation on PTF data yielded 33 candidates from a sample of $\approx$35k quasars. Working under the SMBHB hypothesis, we compute the implied SMBHB merger rate and we use it to construct the expected gravitational wave background (GWB) at nano-Hz frequencies, probed by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). After correcting for incompleteness and assuming virial mass estimates, we find that the GWB implied by the CRTS sample exceeds the current most stringent PTA upper limits by almost an order of magnitude. After further correcting for the implicit bias in virial mass measurements, the implied GWB drops significantly but is still in tension with the most stringent PTA upper limits. Similar results hold for the PTF sample. Bayesian model selection shows that the null hypothesis (whereby the candidates are false positives) is preferred over the binary hypothesis at about $2.3\sigma$ and $3.6\sigma$ for the CRTS and PTF samples respectively. Although not decisive, our analysis highlights the potential of PTAs as astrophysical probes of individual SMBHB candidates and indicates that the CRTS and PTF samples are likely contaminated by several false positives.