PIRSA:17030015

Unlocking the potential of pulsar timing arrays

Mingarelli, C. (2017). Unlocking the potential of pulsar timing arrays. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/17030015

Mingarelli, Chiara. Unlocking the potential of pulsar timing arrays. Perimeter Institute, Mar. 06, 2017, https://pirsa.org/17030015 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:17030015,
            doi = {10.48660/17030015},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/17030015},
            author = {Mingarelli, Chiara},
            keywords = {Other},
            language = {en},
            title = {Unlocking the potential of pulsar timing arrays},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2017},
            month = {mar},
            note = {PIRSA:17030015 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Chiara Mingarelli California Institute of Technology

DOI 10.48660/17030015
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Galaxy mergers are a standard aspect of galaxy formation and evolution, and most (likely all) large galaxies contain supermassive black holes. As part of the merging process, the supermassive black holes should in-spiral together and eventually merge, generating both continuous gravitational waves and a background of gravitational radiation in the nanohertz to microhertz regime.  An array of precisely timed pulsars spread across the sky can form a galactic-scale gravitational wave detector in the nanohertz band. I describe the current efforts to develop and extend the pulsar timing array concept, together with recent limits which have emerged from international efforts to constrain astrophysical phenomena at the heart of supermassive black hole mergers.