School of Astroparticle Physics
May 27th - June 1st, 2013
OHP, Saint Michel l'Observatoire

Gravitational Waves

Pulsar Timing Array and Gravitationnal Waves detection

Ismael COGNARD
Laboratoire de physique et chimie de l'environnement et de l'Espace (LPC2E)

Course
I will present the recycled millisecond pulsars and will try to convince you that, despite being far away in the Galaxy, millisecond pulsars are ideal tools for high-precision measurements. I will then focuss on the crucial intrumental and analysis aspects of the precise timing measurements done on those objects. I will present all the efforts presently being done to coordinate the pulsar community within Pulsar Timing Arrays (australian PPTA, north-american Nanograv and european EPTA). All together, we gather in the International PTA (IPTA) focusing toward the Gravitational Waves detection.
Chapters
  1. Pulsars as highly stable clocks
  2. High precision timing measurements
  3. Pulsar Timing Arrays


Abstract
High precision radio timing measurements on a set of highly stable millisecond pulsars are used to put constrains on a Gravitational Waves (GWs) background produced by supermassive black hole binaries. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are collaborations which aim to detect low-frequency (10-9 to 10-8 Hz) extragalactic GWs directly, by using a set of Galactic millisecond pulsars as nearly perfect Einstein clocks.

 Bibliography
    • Handbook of Pulsar Astronomy, M.Kramer & D.Lorimer, Cambridge University Press, 2012
    • Sesana & Vecchio, CQG 27, 084016, 2010
    • van Haasteren et al., MNRAS 395, 1005, 2009
    • EPTA www.epta.eu.org
    • IPTA www.ipta4gw.org

 

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