Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session K5: Listening to the Universe with Pulsar Timing ArraysInvited Undergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: GGR DAP Chair: Chiara Mingarelli, California Institute of Technology Room: Ballroom D |
Sunday, April 17, 2016 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
K5.00001: Building a Galactic Scale Gravitational Wave Observatory Invited Speaker: Maura McLaughlin Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars with phenomenal rotational~stability that can be used as celestial clocks in a variety of fundamental physics experiences. One of these experiments involves using a pulsar timing array of precisely timed millisecond pulsars to detect perturbations due to gravitational waves. The low frequency gravitational waves detectable through pulsar timing will most likely result from an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries. I will introduce the efforts of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), a collaboration that monitors over 50 millisecond pulsars with the Green Bank Telescope and the Arecibo Observatory, with a focus on our observation and data analysis methods. I will also describe how NANOGrav has joined international partners through the International Pulsar Timing Array to form a low-frequency gravitational wave detector of unprecedented sensitivity. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 17, 2016 2:06PM - 2:42PM |
K5.00002: Detecting stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays Invited Speaker: Xavier Siemens For the past decade the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) has been using the Green Bank Telescope and the Arecibo Observatory to monitor millisecond pulsars. NANOGrav, along with two other international collaborations, the European Pulsar Timing Array and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array in Australia, form a consortium of consortia: the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA). The goal of the IPTA is to directly detect low-frequency gravitational waves which cause small changes to the times of arrival of radio pulses from millisecond pulsars. In this talk I will discuss the work of NANOGrav and the IPTA, as well as our sensitivity to stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves. I will show that a detection of the background produced by supermassive black hole binaries is possible by the end of the decade. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 17, 2016 2:42PM - 3:18PM |
K5.00003: Exploring the Universe with Pulsar Timing Arrays Invited Speaker: Sarah Burke-Spolaor It is an exciting time for pulsar timing arrays, as their upper limits on gravitational radiation are carving into the expected strength of gravitational waves from several source populations in the Universe. Cosmic strings, inflationary gravitational waves, and binary supermassive black holes are all expected contributors to the nanohertz to microhertz band probed by pulsar timing arrays: they might be discovered as bursting sources, as continuously oscillating signals, or as an ensemble population in a stochastic background. This presentation will discuss the predicted intensity and form of these sources, and how the upper limits set by pulsar timing arrays are being used to set unique constraints on source properties, and to measure galaxy evolution in the nearby Universe. Looking to the future, we will explore how pulsar timing arrays can characterize their target source populations, and we will present the prospects for multi-messenger detection. [Preview Abstract] |
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