Data science for the study of gravitational waves with high precision pulsar timing

脉冲星是快速旋转的中子星，它沿着极强磁场的两极扫出辐射束。每当脉冲星的辐射束扫过地球时，我们就能观测到它发出的无线电波脉冲。旋转最快的恒星，其旋转周期为几毫秒，作为令人难以置信的稳定时钟，可用于引力物理学实验。我们正在作为一个大型国际合作的一部分，欧洲脉冲星定时阵列，以探测来自遥远星系中心超大质量黑洞双星的引力波。这个博士项目涉及开发强大的统计数据分析技术，通过更好地理解数据中的各种噪声过程来提高脉冲星定时阵列的灵敏度。这些过程本身就是有趣的研究课题，涵盖了脉冲星本身的基本过程，也允许研究位于我们和脉冲星之间的湍流星际等离子体。

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars which sweep out beams of radiation along the poles of their extremely strong magnetic fields. We observe a pulse of radio waves from the pulsar each time its beam of emission sweeps across the Earth. The most rapidly rotating pulsars, which have spin periods of a few milliseconds, act as incredibly stable clocks and can be used in experiments of gravitational physics. We are working as part of a large international collaboration, the European Pulsar Timing Array, to detect gravitational waves from supermassive black-hole binaries at the centre of distant galaxies. This PhD project involves developing robust statistical data analysis techniques to improve the pulsar timing array sensitivity by better understanding the various noise processes in the data. These processes are themselves interesting topics of study, covering processes fundamental to the pulsar itself as well as allowing for study of the turbulent interstellar plasma that lies between us and the pulsar.