Upper Limits on Microhertz Gravitational Waves from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries Using PSR J1909–3744 Data from the Second IPTA Data Release

We present the results of a search for gravitational waves (GWs) from individual sources using high-cadence observations of PSR J1909−3744 obtained during an intensive observing campaign with the International Pulsar Timing Array second data release between 2010 July and 2012 November. The observations, conducted at three different radio frequencies with the Nançay Radio Telescope and Parkes Telescope and five frequencies with the Green Bank Telescope, enabled precise corrections for dispersion measure effects and scattering variations. After these corrections, the timing residuals showed an unmodeled periodic noise component with an amplitude of 340 ns. Our analysis yields upper limits on the GW strain from individual sources, constraining it to be below 1.9 × 10 −14 at 71 nHz and 2.3 × 10 −13 at 1 μ Hz for average sky locations, while for optimal source locations, the limits improve to 6.2 × 10 −15 and 8.9 × 10 −14 at the same frequencies, respectively. Our new limits are about a factor of 1.52 more stringent than those of B. B. P. Perera et al. (2018) based on an earlier EPTA data.