Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: Dr. Kayhan Gultekin
This event is in the past.
When:
November 30, 2023
3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Where:
Event category:
Seminar
In-person
TITLE: Using the NANOGrav Measurements of the Gravitational Wave Background to Constrain the Supermassive Black Hole Binary Population
ABSTRACT: NANOGrav has found evidence for the gravitational wave background from our pulsar timing array data. This Earth-moving new science is the result of fifteen years of work with contributions from over a hundred scientists and is consistent with other pulsar timing arrays. I will present our recent results and why we are confident in our results. I will discuss the interpretation of the background as due to a cosmic population of supermassive black hole binaries as well as other, more exotic ideas. I will present how our pulsar timing array data put constraints on the population of massive black holes and how we can improve these constraints with optical, infrared, and X-ray observations of galaxies and binary AGN.