Unravelling the Universe with Pulsar Timing Arrays

30 Nov 2023, 00:10 → 2 Dec 2023, 13:00 US/Eastern

University of Pittsburgh

Tao Han

Workshop Scope and Goals: The detection of Gravitational Waves has opened a new window to observe the universe. The evidence of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) found by Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) such as the NANOGrav Collaboration gives a view of the SGWB in the nanohertz frequency range. At the same time, significant progress has been made in understanding the primordial and astrophysical sources of gravitational waves and their detection with PTAs. Thus PTAs can provide a window into the astrophysics of supermassive black holes (SMBH), as well as beyond standard model physics that could have played a role during the first microseconds of the universe. The aim of this workshop is to bring experts on various topics of PTAs, astrophysics of SMBH, and primordial sources of gravitational waves. It will focus on opportunities for pulsars and PTAs to address problems in astronomy, astrophysics and BSM physics. Plenty of time will be provided to foster collaboration among the participants. 

Dates: November 30th to December 2nd, 2023 (Thursday - Saturday)

Location: In person, University of Pittsburgh,

Workshop venue: Hilton Garden Inn, 3454 Forbes Ave. Click here

Banquet venue: Grand Concourse

Local Organizers: Brian Batell, Amit Bhoonah, Arnab Dasgupta, Akshay Ghalsasi, Tao Han, Arthur Kosowsky, Andrew Zentner. 

External Organizers: Maura McLaughlin, Sean McWilliams

 
Administrator: Joni George

The Zoom room link for the conference is: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/95417938368

To acquire the Zoom room password, kindly send an email to any of the individuals listed in the Contact section.

Invited Speakers:

Yang Bai

Paul Baker

Kimberly Boddy

Neil Cornish

Jeff Dror

Emmanuel Fonesca

Ross Jennings

Tina Kahniashvili

Luke Zoltan Kelly

Arthur Kosowsky

Tingting Liu

Tiziana Di Matteo

Maura McLaughlin

Sean McWilliams

Harikrishnan Ramani

Alex Saffer

Sarah Vigeland

Thursday 30 November

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 10:20 Morning Early: Pulsar Timing Arrays

09:00 Welcome

09:05 Intro to PTAs

Speaker: Dr Paul Baker (Widener University)

intro_PTA.pdf

09:45 Modeling Pulsar noise and predicting Pulsar TOA

Speaker: Dr Ross Jennings

A tour of pulsar timing and noise modeling.pdf

10:20 → 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 → 12:10 Morning Late: Pulsar Timing Arrays

10:50 Searching for GW bursts in PTAs

Speaker: Prof. Neil Cornish

PTA_Burst_Pitt.pdf

11:30 SMBHB formation and merger at high redshift

Speaker: Nianyi Chen

12:10 → 12:30 Discussion

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch Break

14:00 → 15:20 Afternoon Early: SMBHB merger history and as sources of GW at NANOGrav

14:00 SMBHB merger at low redshift

Speaker: Sean McWilliams

MBHB-PTA.pdf

14:40 Multi-messenger science with supermassive black hole binaries.

Speaker: Tingting Liu

Pitt_SMBHBs_LIU.pdf

15:20 → 15:50 Coffee Break

15:50 → 17:10 Afternoon Late: SMBHB merger history and as sources of GW at NANOGrav

15:50 Astrophysics from nanohertz GW

Speaker: Dr Luke Zoltan Kelly (University of California at Berkeley)

17:15 → 18:15 Discussion

Friday 1 December

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 10:20 Morning Early: Astronomy/Astrophysics/BSM

09:00 NANOGrav 15 yrs stochastic GW analysis

Speaker: Sarah Vigeland (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)

NG_15_yr_Analysis.pdf

09:40 Neutron star equation of state with pulsars

Speaker: Emmanuel Fonseca

upitt_NG_2023_Fonseca_Emmanuel.pdf

10:20 → 10:50 Coffee Break

10:50 → 12:10 Morning Late: Astronomy/Astrophysics/BSM

10:50 Observability of Dark Matter Substructure with Pulsar Timing Correlations

Speaker: Harikrishnan Ramani

pulsar timing talk - Pittsburgh.pdf

11:30 Domain Walls

Speaker: Yang Bai

QCDDW_Yang_Bai.key

QCDDW_Yang_Bai.pdf

12:10 → 12:30 Discussion

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch Break

14:00 → 15:20 Afternoon Early: BSM signals for NANOGrav

14:00 Cosmological Phase Transition at PTA

Speaker: Dr Arthur Kosowsky (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh)

pittpacc23.pdf

14:40 Relic gravitational waves and primordial magnetic fields

Speaker: Prof. Tina Kahniashvili (Carnegie Mellon University)

Relic Gravitational Waves Primordial Turbulence and Magnetic FiELDS.pdf

15:20 → 15:50 Coffee Break

15:50 → 17:10 Afternoon Late: BSM signals for NANOGrav

15:50 Tests of GR

Speaker: Dr Alex Saffer (West Virginia University)

18:00 → 21:00 Banquet: Grand Concourse, shuttle will pick you up at the hotel at 6:00 p.m

Saturday 2 December

08:30 → 09:00 Breakfast

09:00 → 10:15 Morning Early: Tools + Future Outlook

09:00 NANOGrav tests of new physics

Speaker: Prof. Kimberly Boddy (University of Texas at Austin)

09:40 Sub-Nanohertz Gravitational Waves with PTAs

Speaker: Dr Asaf Jeff Dror (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Workshop_PITT.pdf

10:15 → 10:45 Coffee Break

10:45 → 11:20 Morning Late: Tools + Outlook

10:45 Future of NANOGrav and other PTAs

Speaker: Prof. Maura McLaughlin (West Virginia University)