Speaker
Emmanuel Fonseca
(West Virginia University)
Description
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars that emit beamed emission observed as periodic pulses on Earth. The practice of "pulsar timing" yields a wealth of uniquely powerful measurements across different astrophysical phenomena. Among these is the gradual detection of a stochastic background of gravitational waves (GWs) using a collection of pulsars rotating with millisecond spin periods. In my talk, I will overview the concept of "pulsar timing arrays" and discuss ongoing work being undertaken by members of the NANOGrav collaboration in constraining the presence of GWs at nanohertz frequencies.
