Efficient large-scale, targeted gravitational-wave probes of supermassive black-hole binaries

TL;DR

This paper introduces a computationally efficient approximation method for targeted gravitational-wave searches from supermassive black-hole binaries, significantly reducing complexity while maintaining accurate constraints.

Contribution

The paper presents an Earth-term approximation that simplifies large-scale GW searches, enabling faster and more feasible multi-messenger investigations.

Findings

The approximation is over 100 times more efficient than previous methods.

It provides similar constraints on binary mass and GW frequency.

The method facilitates large-scale targeted GW searches.

Abstract

Supermassive black hole binaries are promising sources of low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) and bright electromagnetic emission. Pulsar timing array searches for resolved binaries are complex and computationally expensive and so far limited to only a few sources. We present an efficient approximation that empowers large-scale targeted multi-messenger searches by neglecting GW signal components from the pulsar term. This Earth-term approximation provides similar constraints on the total mass and GW frequency of the binary, yet is $>100$ times more efficient.