Physical Society Colloquium

An International Pulsar Timing Array for Gravitational Wave Detection

Maura McLaughlin

West Virginia University

Since their discovery in 1982, millisecond pulsars have served as exquisite probes of fundamental physics. I will discuss the most transformative current application of millisecond pulsars: the direct detection of gravitational waves. Timing an array of pulsars could result in the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background, most likely resulting from an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries. I will describe the recent progress of this experiment and the gains that are being made with discoveries of many new millisecond pulsars, more sensitive instrumentation, improved detection algorithms and international collaboration. I will show that a detection of gravitational waves is possible within the next 5-10 years.