Video URL

https://pirsa.org/20030011

Probing Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves

Vigeland, S. (2020). Probing Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/20030011

Vigeland, Sarah. Probing Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Mar. 19, 2020, https://pirsa.org/20030011 

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:20030011,
            doi = {10.48660/20030011},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/20030011},
            author = {Vigeland, Sarah},
            keywords = {Strong Gravity},
            language = {en},
            title = {Probing Supermassive Black Holes with Gravitational Waves},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2020},
            month = {mar},
            note = {PIRSA:20030011 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/pirsa/20030011}}
          }

Sarah Vigeland University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

DOI 10.48660/20030011
Source Repository PIRSA
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Observations have shown that nearly all galaxies harbor massive or supermassive black holes at their centers. Gravitational wave (GW) observations of these black holes will shed light on their growth and evolution, and the merger histories of galaxies. Massive and supermassive black holes are also ideal  laboratories for studying strong-field gravity. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use observations of millisecond pulsars to detect low-frequency GWs with frequencies ~1-100 nHz, and can detect GWs emitted by supermassive black hole binaries, which form when two galaxies merge. I will discuss source modeling and detection techniques for PTAs, as well as present limits on nanohertz GWs from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration.