No Arabic abstract
We propose a novel probe of fundamental physics that involves the exploration of temporal correlations between the multi-frequency electromagnetic (EM) signal and the sub-threshold GW signal or stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) originating from coalescing binaries. This method will be useful for the detection of EM counterparts associated with the sub-threshold/SGWB signal. Exploiting the time delay between concomitant emission of the gravitational wave and EM signals enables inference of the redshifts of the contributing sources by studying the time delay dilation due to cosmological expansion, provided that the time-lag between the emission of gravitational wave signal and the EM signal acts like a standard clock. Measurement of the inevitable time-domain correlations between different frequencies of gravitational and EM waves, most notably in gamma-rays, will test several aspects of fundamental physics and gravitation theory, and enable a new pathway for current and future gravitational wave telescopes to study the universal nature of binary compact objects to high redshifts.
The cosmological evolution of the binary black hole (BH) merger rate and the energy density of the gravitational-wave (GW) background are investigated. To evaluate the redshift dependence of the BH formation rate, BHs are assumed to originate from low-metallicity stars, and the relations between the star formation rate, metallicity and stellar mass of galaxies are combined with the stellar mass function at each redshift. As a result, it is found that when the energy density of the GW background is scaled with the merger rate at the local Universe, the scaling factor does not depend on the critical metallicity for the formation of BHs. Also taking into account the merger of binary neutron stars, a simple formula to express the energy spectrum of the GW background is constructed for the inspiral phase. The relation between the local merger rate and the energy density of the GW background will be examined by future GW observations.
The nanohertz gravitational wave background (GWB) is believed to be dominated by GW emission from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). Observations of several dual active galactic nuclei (AGN) strongly suggest a link between AGN and SMBHBs, given that these dual AGN systems will eventually form bound binary pairs. Here we develop an exploratory SMBHB population model based on empirically constrained quasar populations, allowing us to decompose the GWB amplitude into an underlying distribution of SMBH masses, SMBHB number density, and volume enclosing the GWB. Our approach also allows us to self-consistently predict the GWB amplitude and the number of local SMBHB systems. Interestingly, we find the local number density of SMBHBs implied by the common-process signal in the NANOGrav 12.5-yr dataset to be roughly five times larger than previously predicted by other models. We also find that at most $sim 25 %$ of SMBHBs can be associated with quasars. Furthermore, our quasar-based approach predicts $gtrsim 95%$ of the GWB signal comes from $z lesssim 2.5$, and that SMBHBs contributing to the GWB have masses $gtrsim 10^8 M_odot$. We also explore how different empirical galaxy-black hole scaling relations affect the local number density of GW sources, and find that relations predicting more massive black holes decrease the local number density of SMBHBs. Overall, our results point to the important role that a measurement of the GWB will play in directly constraining the cosmic population of SMBHBs, as well as their connections to quasars and galaxy mergers.
It has been a half-decade since the first direct detection of gravitational waves, which signifies the coming of the era of the gravitational-wave astronomy and gravitational-wave cosmology. The increasing number of the detected gravitational-wave events has revealed the promising capability of constraining various aspects of cosmology, astronomy, and gravity. Due to the limited space in this review article, we will briefly summarize the recent progress over the past five years, but with a special focus on some of our own work for the Key Project Physics associated with the gravitational waves supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In particular, (1) we have presented the mechanism of the gravitational-wave production during some physical processes of the early Universe, such as inflation, preheating and phase transition, and the cosmological implications of gravitational-wave measurements; (2) we have put constraints on the neutron star maximum mass according to GW170817 observations; (3) we have developed a numerical relativity algorithm based on the finite element method and a waveform model for the binary black hole coalescence along an eccentric orbit.
The paucity of observed supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) may imply that the gravitational wave background (GWB) from this population is anisotropic, rendering existing analyses sub-optimal. We present the first constraints on the angular distribution of a nanohertz stochastic GWB from circular, inspiral-driven SMBHBs using the $2015$ European Pulsar Timing Array data [Desvignes et al. (in prep.)]. Our analysis of the GWB in the $sim 2 - 90$ nHz band shows consistency with isotropy, with the strain amplitude in $l>0$ spherical harmonic multipoles $lesssim 40%$ of the monopole value. We expect that these more general techniques will become standard tools to probe the angular distribution of source populations.
We compute the production rate of the energy density carried by gravitational waves emitted by a Standard Model plasma in thermal equilibrium, consistently to leading order in coupling constants for momenta $ksim pi T$. Summing up the contributions from the full history of the universe, the highest temperature of the radiation epoch can be constrained by the so-called $N_{rm eff}$ parameter. The current theoretical uncertainty $Delta N_{rm eff} le 10^{-3}$ corresponds to $T_{rm max} le 2times 10^{17}$ GeV. In the course of the computation, we show how a subpart of the production rate can be determined with the help of standard packages, even if subsequently an IR subtraction and thermal resummation need to be implemented.