Orateur
Description
Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) observations are carried out to search for
gravitational waves (GWs) in the nano-Hertz band. The most plausible
source is the population of supermassive black hole binaries emitting
GWs that incoherently superpose and form a stochastic GW background
(SGWB). In addition, particularly massive and nearby SMBHBs produce
strong signals that may stand out above the GWB and be individually
resolvable. PTAs will see the early inspiral of these systems observed
at large orbital separations, where the orbital evolution may be
strongly influenced by dynamical interactions with the environment,
through which SMBHBs may retain a significant eccentricity.
In this poster, I will present a gravitational waveform model based on
the Effective-One-Body (EOB) approach. We use it to search for eccentric
binaries in the data collected by EPTA collaboration. We verify the
efficiency of the search and its limitations using simulated PTA data.
In particular, we focus on disentangling a continuous GW signal from a
binary from SGWB. Evaluating our ability to detect and correctly
characterise eccentric binaries is an essential step in analysing and
interpreting results based on EPTA and IPTA data, which, in turn,
impacts our understanding of the properties of the SMBH population in
the local Universe.
| Speaker information | PhD 2nd year |
|---|
