7–12 Jul 2024
Aurum, the ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University and ICRANet
Europe/Rome timezone

Searching for Nanohertz Gravitational Waves with Pulsar Timing Arrays

12 Jul 2024, 11:30
30m
Sala D'Annunzio (Aurum)

Sala D'Annunzio

Aurum

Plenary talk Friday plenary session

Speaker

Sarah Vigeland

Description

Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to low-frequency gravitational waves with periods of months to decades. They do so by precisely timing a collection of millisecond pulsars, whose extremely stable rotation makes them ideal for measuring perturbations in spacetime. Gravitational waves induce correlations in the pulse arrival times that follows a characteristic pattern known as the Hellings-Downs curve. Recently, pulsar timing array experiments around the world published the first evidence of nanohertz gravitational waves in the form of a gravitational wave background. In this talk, I will discuss how pulsar timing arrays detect gravitational waves, describe recent results from the NANOGrav collaboration and the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) collaboration, and discuss future prospects for finding nanohertz gravitational waves from a variety of sources.

Presentation materials

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