WOU-MMA: Probing Supermassive Binary Black Holes with Pulsar Timing Arrays

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This award supports research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. Gravitational waves provide a new way of observing the Universe and promise to revolutionize our understanding of many topics in physics and astronomy. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use millisecond pulsars to detect low-frequency gravitational waves, and promising sources in this frequency band include supermassive binary black holes. Gravitational wave observations of these sources will help us understand their growth and evolution, as well as the properties of the galaxies in which they reside. PTAs can also perform fundamental tests of gravity by determining whether the gravitational waves emitted by these sources have the properties predicted by general relativity.The research in this proposal focuses on developing data analysis techniques for PTAs. The PI will use simulations to study how the significance of the gravitational wave signal evolves over time, and use these results to design robust pipelines for detecting and characterizing gravitational waves. The PI will also study ways of optimizing pulsar timing arrays, such as identifying sky locations to search for new millisecond pulsars. Finally, the PI will improve methods for combining data from different telescopes to enhance the sensitivity of PTAs by leveraging the next-generation radio telescopes currently under construction around the world.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.