Colloquium – Maura McLaughlin

Maura McLaughlin, West Virginia University

Pulsar Timing Arrays: A new window on the gravitational wave universe

Millisecond pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars with phenomenal rotational stability. Pulsar timing arrays worldwide monitor over 100 of these cosmic clocks in order to search for perturbations due to gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies. The tell-tale sign of a stochastic background of gravitational waves in pulsar timing data is the presence of quadrupolar spatial correlations. Pulsar timing array collaborations have now found evidence of these spatial correlations in multiple independent pulsar datasets. The signal is consistent with that expected from an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries, but could also be attributable to more exotic sources, such as cosmic strings or early universe inflation. I will describe these experiments and the most recent results, in particular highlighting those from the NANOGrav collaboration, and will discuss the increases in sensitivity expected from the combination of data observed with new and existing telescopes across the globe.

BIO
Dr. McLaughlin’s main research interests involve studying neutron stars and their environments through radio, X-ray and gamma-ray observations. Neutron stars are amazing physical laboratories for general relativity, studies of the interstellar medium, high-energy particle and plasma physics, and studies of stellar evolution. A significant research aim, as Co-Director of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, is to use neutron stars to detect and characterize low-frequency gravitational waves through timing an array of ultra-precise millisecond pulsars. She is also a member of the International Pulsar Timing Array collaboration, which aims to form an incredibly sensitive pulsar timing dataset through the combination of data from the world’s largest radio telescopes. Dr. McLaughlin is also the co-discover of the first fast radio burst (FRB), for which she was recently awarded the Shaw Prize in Astronomy.

Thursday, February 27, 2025 @ 4:10pm Central in Stevenson 4327

Host: S. Taylor