September 19-20, 2023

Speaker: Maura McLaughlin (West Virginia University)

Contact Information: maura.mclaughlin@mail.wvu.edu

Title: Pulsar Timing Arrays: A New Window on the Gravitational Wave Universe

Abstract: Millisecond pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars with phenomenal rotational stability. Pulsar timing arrays world-wide monitor over 100 of these cosmic clocks in order to search for perturbations due to gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies. The tell-tale sign of a stochastic background of gravitational waves in pulsar timing data is the presence of quadrupolar spatial correlations. Recently, and for the first time ever, pulsar timing array collaborations have found evidence of these spatial correlations in multiple independent pulsar datasets.  The signal is consistent with that expected from an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries, but could also be attributable to more exotic sources, such as cosmic strings or early universe inflation. I will describe these experiments and the most recent results, concentrating on those from the NANOGrav collaboration, and will discuss the increases in sensitivity expected from the combination of data observed with new and existing telescopes across the globe.

Visitor's room: 103A

Visit Schedule:

Wednesday (September 20, 2023):

• 9:30 a.m.: Anatoly Spitkovsky (123 Peyton)

• 10:00 a.m.: Charlotte Ward 

• 10:30 a.m.: Coffee

• 11:00 a.m.:  Jeremy Goodman (129 Peyton)

• 11:30 a.m.: 

• 12:00 p.m.: Wunch

• 12:30 p.m.: Wunch

• 1:00 p.m.: Rodrigo Cordova (GC right after Wunch)

• 1:30 p.m.:  Lyman Page (Jadwin 217)

• 2:00 p.m.: Ani Prabhu (Jadwin 410)

• 2:30 p.m.: Ashley Bransgrove (Jadwin 411B)

• 3:00 p.m.: 

• 3:30 p.m.: Bruce Draine (108 Peyton)

• 4:00 p.m.: Uddipan Banik (002 Peyton)

• 4:30 p.m:

• 5:00 p.m.: Arno Vanthieghem (124 Peyton)

Dinner Sign-up - add your name here:

Wednesday (6pm September 20, 2023) at Mediterra

1. Faculty Host: Anatoly Spitkovsky

2.  Allen Foster

3. He Jia

4. Minghao Guo

5. Robert Lupton

6. Arno Vanthieghem

7. Siddhartha Gupta

8. Alisa Galishnikova

STUDENTS HAVE PRIORITY.

PLEASE NO MORE THAN 8 PEOPLE (it is more difficult to properly interact with the speaker in larger groups).