Very low frequency gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes

Elinore Roebber (McGill University)

February 16, 2017

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Abstract: The detection of gravitational waves a year and a half ago by the LIGO experiment has brought about a renaissance in the field of gravitational wave astronomy. But LIGO is not the only gravitational wave detector. At much lower frequencies, pulsar timing arrays are searching for gravitational waves produced by a population of binary supermassive black holes. I will present a population synthesis model used to simulate such a population of binary supermassive black holes, the characteristics of the stochastic gravitational wave background produced, and representations for making skymaps of the gravitational wave background.