Detectors Made of Stars: NANOGrav's Current Status and Vision for Pulsar Timing as Gravitational Wave Detectors
ORAL · Invited
Abstract
NANOGrav and the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) have been at the forefront of low-frequency gravitational wave science for many years by performing consistent, long-term, high-precision measurements of the arrival times of radio pulses from arrays of millisecond pulsars. In this talk, I report on the current status of NANOGrav and IPTA's efforts to time and study pulsars and the interstellar medium, develop methods for gravitational-wave detection, investigate supermassive black holes, constrain new physics, and broaden the collaborations' reach within the wider community. In particular, I present the preliminary status of our searches for the gravitational-wave background, building on our previous efforts that uncovered the first evidence for such a background in the summer of 2023.
*NANOGrav collaboration receives support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics Frontier Center award numbers 1430284 and 2020265, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, NSF AccelNet award number 2114721, an NSERC Discovery Grant, and CIFAR. The Arecibo Observatory is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement (AST-1744119) by the University of Central Florida (UCF) in alliance with Universidad Ana G. M´endez (UAGM) and Yang Enterprises (YEI), Inc. The Green Bank Observatory is a facility of the NSF operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
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Presenters
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Nima Laal
- Vanderbilt University