PTA Probes of Supermassive Black Hole Binary and Their Environments
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute/S4F-SW - Open Area
Tsung-Dao Lee Institute
Host: Mengtao Tang
Location: TDLI, Open Area (4F-SW)
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Abstract:
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) have recently opened the nanohertz gravitational wave window by detecting a stochastic gravitational wave background. A key challenge in the coming years is to establish whether this signal indeed originates from a cosmological population of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), for example through the identification of individually resolvable binaries emerging from the background. I will present recent progress toward forecasting the emergence of such individual binaries and reconstructing their source properties, illustrating how PTAs are evolving from measurements of a stochastic background to precision studies of individual SMBHB systems. I will then discuss how interactions with stars and dark matter influence the evolution of SMBHBs and imprint characteristic signatures on the gravitational wave spectrum, including the low-frequency turnover hinted at by current PTA observations. Finally, I will briefly comment on more exotic possibilities, such as ultralight bosons around SMBHBs, which could introduce additional signatures in future PTA observations.
Biography:
Yifan Chen is a tenure-track fellow at the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, his master’s degree from École Polytechnique and Université Paris-Saclay (France), and his PhD from Sorbonne University (France). He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen (Denmark). His research spans particle physics, gravitational waves and black holes, as well as terrestrial experiments probing fundamental physics.
