TUNA Lunch Talk:

Tim Pennucci

UVA

The NANOGrav PTA Experiment: Overview and Developments

November 18

12:10PM, Room 230, NRAO, Edgemont Road

Abstract:

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) seeks to make direct detections of gravitational waves by means of monitoring an array of millisecond pulsars over decade-long timescales. As the experiment is now approaching the end of its first decade of data collection, I will overview the experiment's operations and goals, as well as some of the challenges it faces. In particular, I will describe my own contribution to the analyzing of the NANOGrav dataset in the context of future broadband receiver and backend systems, as well as ancillary science to come from the NANOGrav dataset and planned future observations.