Probing Supermassive Black Hole Mergers with Pulsar Timing Arrays

TL;DR

This paper explores how Pulsar Timing Arrays can detect individual supermassive black hole binaries that merged before observations started, revealing a new class of gravitational wave sources called 'zombie binaries.'

Contribution

It introduces the concept of 'zombie binaries' and demonstrates that PTAs, especially with the Square Kilometer Array, can potentially detect these pre-merger SMBHBs.

Findings

Current PTAs have low probability of detecting zombie binaries.

Square Kilometer Array is expected to detect a few zombie binaries with SNR > 3.

Zombie binaries provide a new way to study massive SMBHBs in the local universe.

Abstract

By monitoring the times of arrival of radio pulses from millisecond pulsars, Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) serve as unique gravitational wave (GW) laboratories in the nanohertz band. To date, the primary astrophysical sources of GWs targeted in this frequency range have been inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) on circular and eccentric orbits. In this work, we demonstrate that, thanks to the so-called pulsar term in the timing residual waveform of GW signals, PTAs can probe individual SMBHBs that merged before timing observations began. We refer to the latter as \emph{zombie binaries}. Using SMBHB population models consistent with current PTA constraints, we find that while the probability of detecting such systems in existing PTA datasets remains low, the Square Kilometer Array observatory is expected to achieve sufficient sensitivity to have a few zombie binaries with a signal-to-noise ratio exceeding 3 in its data. Although their confident identification might be challenging, this new class of PTA sources opens a novel window for studying the most massive SMBHBs in our local universe.