Speaker
Sarah Burke Spolaor
(NASA-JPL)
Description
Pulsars rotating at periods of a few milliseconds have proven to act as
precise celestial clocks. Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs), use multiple pulsars distributed
throughout the sky to detect disturbances in the pulsar-local space-time, and
correlated disturbances in Earth's perceived location. PTAs are uniquely sensitive
to the low-frequency (nHz-uHz) gravitational wave spectrum, and are capable of
detecting gravitational waves (GWs) from cosmic string loops and binary supermassive
black hole binaries formed in galaxy mergers. Excitingly, the sensitivity of pulsar
timing has reached the upper range of the GW signal predictions for standard
cosmological structure formation scenarios. This talk will describe PTAs, their
current status, sensitivity to various source type, and our expected prospects for
the future detection of gravitational radiation using PTAs. Part of this research was
carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under
a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Primary author
Sarah Burke Spolaor
(NASA-JPL)
