Title: Detection of gravitational waves with pulsar timing array
Speaker:Dr. ZHU Xingjiang
Time:15:00, April 17
Location:Medium Conference Room of Tianwen Tower
Abstract: Gravitational wave astronomy is an emerging branch of observational astronomy. In this talk I will first give an overview of gravitational waves and a brief history of detection efforts across the gravitational wave spectrum. I will review the recent LIGO detections of signals from coalescing stellar-mass binary black holes. Then I will move on to discuss gravitational wave detection in the nanohertz frequency band through pulsar timing arrays. While no detection has been made so far, it is believed to be likely that the gravitational wave window can be extended to lower frequencies within 5-10 years. After giving some status updates on various timing array programs, I will describe searches for gravitational waves from individual supermassive black hole binaries with Parkes Pulsar Timing Array and the data analysis methods being used for such searches. I will conclude with some remarks regarding the future of gravitational wave astronomy.

About the speaker: Dr. ZHU Xingjiang is currently a research associate at School of Physics, University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth, and the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). He obtained a PhD degree in Physics from UWA in 2016. His research interests include gravitational wave detection with radio timing observations of pulsars, data analysis, theoretical modelling of astrophysical gravitational waves sources and multi-messenger astronomy.