Searching for Continuous Gravitational Waves in the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array Data Release 3
Abstract We present results from an all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves from individual supermassive binary black holes using the third data release of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA). Even though we recover a common-spectrum stochastic process, potentially induced by a nanohertz gravitational-wave background, we find no evidence of continuous waves. Therefore, we place upper limits on the gravitational-wave strain amplitude: in the most sensitive frequency range around 10 nHz, we obtain a sky-averaged 95% credibility upper limit of ≈ 7 × 10 −15 . Our search is sensitive to supermassive binary black holes with a chirp mass of ≥10 9 M ⊙ up to a luminosity distance of 50 Mpc for our least sensitive sky direction and 200 Mpc for the most sensitive direction. This work provides at least 4 times better sensitivity in the 1–200 nHz frequency band than our last search based on the PPTA’s first data release. We expect that PPTA will continue to play a key role in detecting continuous gravitational waves in the exciting era of nanohertz gravitational-wave astronomy.
Authors
- Saurav Mishra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5633-3512)
- R. M. Shannon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7285-6348)
- Daniel J. Reardon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2035-4688)
- Craig Russell (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1942-7296)
- Wenhua Ling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9142-6608)
- Valentina Di Marco (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3432-0494)
- N. D. R. Bhat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8383-5059)
- X. J. Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7049-6468)
- B. Goncharov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3189-5807)
- Tao Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5248-5076)
- Zu-Cheng Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7016-9934)
- Rami Mandow (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5131-522X)
- Hao Ding (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9174-638X)
- Shi Dai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-2499)
- G. Hobbs (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1502-100X)
- Andrew Zic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9583-2947)
- Agastya Kapur (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5071-0962)
- Jacob Cardinal Tremblay (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9852-6825)
- M. Curyło (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7031-4828)
- Lei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8539-4237)
- Shiyi Zhao
- Shuangqiang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4498-6070)
Institutions
- Leibniz University Hannover (DE)
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU)
- Australia Telescope National Facility (AU)
- Australian Research Council (AU)
- Hunan Normal University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Curtin University (AU)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory (CN)
- Hong Kong Jockey Club (HK)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (AU)
- Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (DE)
- Institute for Advanced Study (DE)
- National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (JP)
- International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (AU)
- National Astronomical Observatories (CN)
- Monash University (AU)
- Swinburne University of Technology (AU)
- Western Sydney University (AU)
- Macquarie University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Published
- 2025-10-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae0719
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.15
Funders
- Australian Government
- Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
- Swinburne University of Technology
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Beijing Normal University
- State Government of Victoria
- National Key Research and Development Program of China
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities