ABSTRACT

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration recently published its 15-Year Data Set, providing substantial evidence for a nHz background of gravitational waves and marking an exciting milestone for pulsar timing arrays. Since the publication of our 12.5-Year Data Set, which strongly suggested the presence of a common red noise process in NANOGrav's millisecond pulsar (MSP) timing data, we have added 21 new MSPs and 3 years of data. This colloquium will touch on the improvements between our 12.5 and 15-year data releases, results from the 15 year gravitational wave search, and exciting synergistic science results. NANOGrav's participation in the International Pulsar Timing Array's Third Data Release effort, as well as what lies on the horizon for pulsar timing array experiments, will also be discussed.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Thankful Cromartie is a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Her research concerns millisecond pulsar (MSP) timing and its application to the detection of nHz gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays. She also precisely measures neutron star masses using radio and gamma-ray observations of MSPs in an effort to constrain the neutron star equation of state. Since 2015, she has been a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration, and currently serves as chair of its Pulsar Timing working group.