Dr Bence Bécsy PhD

School of Physics and Astronomy
Assistant Professor

Contact details

Email: b.becsy@bham.ac.uk

Address: Physics West Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Bence Bécsy is an Assistant Professor at University of Birmingham’s Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy. His research focuses on using millisecond pulsars to detect low-frequency gravitational waves, like those emitted by supermassive black hole binaries.

Qualifications

PhD in Physics, Montana State University, 2022
MSc in Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, 2018
BSc in Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, 2016

Biography

Dr Bécsy earned his BSc and MSc in Physics at Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), where he worked on gravitational-wave data analysis with ground-based interferometric detectors. He then obtained a PhD in Physics at Montana State University (Bozeman, MT), specializing in gravitational wave astrophysics with pulsar timing arrays. During this time, he also continued to contribute to LIGO research, co-leading the search for short-duration gravitational-wave bursts in the third observing run of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR), during which he co-led the search for resolvable supermassive black hole binaries in the NANOGrav 15-year pulsar timing array dataset, which was part of the set of papers announced in 2023 at a NANOGrav press conference held at the National Science Foundation headquarters. He joined University of Birmingham as an Assistant Professor in 2024.

Teaching

Y1 Introduction to Probability and Statistics
Y2 Physics Tutorials
Y2 Astronomy Projects
Y4 Project Supervision

Postgraduate supervision

PhD supervision on gravitational-wave astrophysics and data analysis

Research

Since the first direct detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015, a new method of gravitational-wave detection has emerged: pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). They can probe gravitational waves with frequencies about 11 orders of magnitude lower than LIGO by monitoring millisecond pulsars over decades, thus providing complementary information about the gravitational-wave universe. These pulsars act as extremely precise cosmic clocks and a passing gravitational wave leaves an imprint on the predictable times-of-arrival of their radio pulses. PTA collaborations around the globe recently found evidence for a so-called stochastic gravitational-wave background at these low frequencies, which marks the start of nanohertz gravitational-wave astronomy, promising many exciting discoveries in the next decades.

Bence Bécsy’s research focuses on detecting and characterizing these low-frequency gravitational waves with novel data analysis techniques. This ultimately helps us understand the astrophysical sources emitting these gravitational waves. These are most likely pairs of the largest black holes in the universe, so-called supermassive black hole binaries. There are many open questions around the formation and evolution of these black holes, which we hope to answer with PTA observations. However, it is also possible that some of these low-frequency gravitational waves are coming from the early universe, which could shed light on new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Lamb, WG, Wachter, JM, Mitridate, A, Sardesai, SC, Bécsy, B, Hagen, EL, Taylor, SR & Kelley, LZ 2026, 'Finite Populations & Finite Time: The Non-Gaussianity of a Gravitational Wave Background', Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, vol. 113, no. 12, 123065. https://doi.org/10.1103/96zk-qtck

NANOGrav Collaboration 2026, 'Gravitational Wave Measurement of the M_BH–M_bulge Intrinsic Scatter at High Redshift', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 1006, no. 1, 63. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae801e

NANOGrav Collaboration, Chen, Y, Daniel, M, D'Orazio, DJ, Fan, X, Mitridate, A, Sagunski, L & Xue, X 2026, 'Inference on inner galaxy structure via gravitational waves from supermassive binaries', Nature Astronomy, vol. 10, pp. 554–563. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02782-0

Matt, C, Bécsy, B, Brook, PR & Young, O 2026, 'Inferring M_BH–M_bulge Evolution from the Gravitational-wave Background', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 997, no. 2, 188. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae2480

NANOGrav Collaboration 2026, 'Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity to Anisotropy: Empirical Sensitivity Curves, Scaling Relations, and the Multi-Resolution Pixel Basis', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 1008, no. 2, 205. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae9759

Hazboun, JS, Simon, J, Baier, J, Larsen, B, Oliver, DJ, Baker, PT, Bécsy, B, Chen, S, Diaz Hernandez, A, Ellis, JA, Holgado, AM, Islo, K, Johnson, A, Kaiser, AR, Laal, N, McEwen, A, Pol, NS, Key, JS, Kim, MY, Samson, M, Shapiro-Albert, BJ, Sun, JP, Taylor, SR, Witt, CA, Volpe, J, Ye, C, Blumer, H, Brook, PR, Chatterjee, S, Cordes, JM, Crawford, F, Cromartie, HT, DeCesar, ME, Demorest, PB, Dolch, T, Ferdman, RD, Ferrara, EC, Fiore, W, Fonseca, E, Garver-Daniels, N, Gentile, PA, Good, DC, Jennings, RJ, Jones, ML, Kaplan, DL, Lam, MT, Lazio, TJW, Lorimer, DR, Luo, J, Lynch, RS, Madison, DR, McLaughlin, MA, Mingarelli, CMF, Ng, C, Nice, DJ, Pennucci, TT, Ransom, SM, Ray, PS, Siemens, X, Spiewak, R, Stairs, IH, Stinebring, DR, Stovall, K, Swiggum, JK, Turner, JE, Vallisneri, M & Vigeland, SJ 2026, 'The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Dataset: Chromatic Noise Characterization and Mitigation with Time-domain Kernels', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 1003, no. 1, 34. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae4ee0

NANOGrav Collaboration 2026, 'The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Targeted Searches for Supermassive Black Hole Binaries', Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 998, no. 1, L11. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae3719

Laal, N, Taylor, SR, Kelley, LZ, Simon, J, Gultekin, K, Wright, D, Becsy, B, Casey-Clyde, JA, Chen, S, Cingoranelli, A, D'Orazio, DJ, Gardiner, EC, Lamb, WG, Matt, C, Siwek, MS & Wachter, JM 2025, 'Deep Neural Emulation of the Supermassive Black-hole Binary Population', The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 982, no. 1, 55. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adb4ef

Letter

NANOGrav Collaboration 2026, 'The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Piecewise Power-law Reconstruction of the Gravitational-wave Background', Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol. 1004, no. 2, L40. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae7086

Preprint

Zheng, Q, Bécsy, B & Mingarelli, CMF 2026 'Gravity Echoes from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.21010

Deng, H, Bécsy, B, Levin, Y, Cornish, NJ & Siemens, X 2026 'Searching for a waveform-agnostic gravitational wave signal in pulsar timing arrays' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.00577

Bécsy, B, Raffai, P, Haiman, Z, Budai, A & Frei, Z 2026 'Statistical evidence for massive black hole recoils in active galactic nuclei' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.04781

NANOGrav Collaboration 2026 'The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Impacts of Customized Chromatic Noise Models on Gravitational Wave Analyses' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.28554

Gersbach, KA, Taylor, SR, Bécsy, B, Lemke, A-M, Mitridate, A & Pol, N 2025 'Mapping the Gravitational-wave Background Across the Spectrum with a Next-Generation Anisotropic Per-frequency Optimal Statistic' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.07090

Hazboun, JS, Simon, J, Baier, J, Larsen, B, Oliver, DJ, Baker, PT, Bécsy, B, Chen, S, Hernandez, AD, Ellis, JA, Holgado, AM, Islo, K, Johnson, A, Kaiser, AR, Laal, N, McEwen, A, Pol, NS, Key, JS, Kim, MY, Samson, M, Shapiro-Albert, BJ, Sun, JP, Taylor, SR, Witt, CA, Volpe, J, Ye, C, Blumer, H, Brook, PR, Chatterjee, S, Cordes, JM, Crawford, F, Cromartie, HT, DeCesar, ME, Demorest, PB, Dolch, T, Ferdman, RD, Ferrara, EC, Fiore, W, Fonseca, E, Garver-Daniels, N, Gentile, PA, Good, DC, Jennings, RJ, Jones, ML, Kaplan, DL, Lam, MT, Lazio, TJW, Lorimer, DR, Luo, J, Lynch, RS, Madison, DR, McLaughlin, MA, Mingarelli, CMF, Ng, C, Nice, DJ, Pennucci, TT, Ransom, SM, Ray, PS, Siemens, X, Spiewak, R, Stairs, IH, Stinebring, DR, Stovall, K, Swiggum, JK, Turner, JE, Vallisneri, M & Vigeland, SJ 2025 'The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Chromatic Noise Characterization & Mitigation with Time-Domain Kernels' arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.22597

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