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Pulsar Array Gravitational-wave Observatory

Pulsar Array Gravitational-wave Observatory. Andrea N. Lommen Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Head of Astronomy Program Director of Grundy Observatory Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, PA. Collaborators. David Nice, Bryn Mawr College Ingrid Stairs, U. British Columbia

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Pulsar Array Gravitational-wave Observatory

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  1. Pulsar Array Gravitational-wave Observatory Andrea N. Lommen Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Head of Astronomy Program Director of Grundy Observatory Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, PA

  2. Collaborators • David Nice, Bryn Mawr College • Ingrid Stairs, U. British Columbia • Don Backer, UC Berkeley • Paul Demorest, NRAO • Rob Ferdman, U. British Columbia, • Dick Manchester, ATNF • Bill Coles, UC San Diego • George Hobbs, ATNF • Rick Jenet, UT Brownsville

  3. 20yrs of B1855+09

  4. PSR J1713+0747 over 12 years

  5. Arecibo dominates by length of data set From Jenet, Hobbs, van Straten, Manchester, Bailes, Verbiest, Edwards, Hotan, Sarkissian & Ord (2006)

  6. Figure courtesy of George Hobbs

  7. Some Possible Sources of Burst Radiation • Formation of SMBH (Thorne and Braginski ‘76) • Close encounters of massive objects (Kocsis 06) • Highly eccentric SMBH binaries (Enoki and Nagashima ‘06) • Cosmic Strings (Damour and Vilenkin ‘01)

  8. The shape of the GW response Thanks Bill Coles

  9. Detection algorithm: Weighted sum of residuals

  10. So what can we detect? • 20 pulsars, 1 microsecond RMS, daily obs, we would detect a 0.70 microsecond maximum response about 93% of the time. For a 2-week burst we calculate the corresponding characteristic strain:

  11. Scaling that last slide • Statistic scales as number of pulsars so e.g. measurable strains halve if number of pulsars doubles • Response scales as burst length, so measurable strains halve if burst length doubles • If 20 pulsars have 100 ns RMS, divide left two columns by 10

  12. Sensitivity to a 0.75 s 2-week burst, daily observing, 20 pulsars

  13. Sensitivity to a 0.75 s 2-week burst, daily observing, 20 pulsars

  14. Sensitivity to a 0.75 s 2-week burst, daily observing, 20 pulsars

  15. Sensitivity to a 0.75 s 2-week burst, daily observing, 20 pulsars + 3 more

  16. Wish-list • Back to 20 observations per year • Wide-band multi-frequency observations (800MHz + Lband + Sband) • Clone of NRAO pulsar “dream” machine. 800 MHz coherent dedispersion with FPGAs • Observing system stream-lined.

  17. Summary and Prospects • Arecibo is needed for detection of GWs. • Arecibo is leading, and is poised to continue to do so, but at one observing session every two months it will lose its edge. • P-ALFA searches important for discovering new pulsars for the array. • North American Pulsar Timing Array meeting next weekend

  18. Detectability of a Waveform • “Recall” (Jenet, Lommen, Larson and Wen 2004)

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