Horizon Run 5 Black Hole Populations and Pulsar Timing Array

  • Published : 2021.10.13

Abstract

Merging of two supermassive black holes would generate gravitational waves that can be detected by the Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) in the nHz band. In order to assess the plausibility of GW detection with PTA and to develop the data analysis scheme, it is important to understand the underlying properties of black holes and black hole binaries. In this work, we present mass and redshift distributions of black hole mergers using the Horizon Run 5 (HR5) data and discuss their implications for GW detection. We find a general conjecture about the black hole merger tree is true with the Horizon Run 5. For example, a) relatively lighter black holes merge at higher redshifts and b) binary mergers do contribute to the formation of more massive black holes toward low redshifts. We also present our plan to use the black hole properties extracted from the HR5 data in order to generate simulated GW signals to be injected into actual PTA data analysis pipelines. Mass and distance obtained from the HR5 would be key ingredients to generate a more realistic PTA source data set.

Keywords