Lecturer: Prof. Victoria Kaspi
Affiliation: McGill University
Abstract:
Millisecond radio pulsars are nature's most perfect
clock, with rotational stabilities that can exceed 1
in 10^15 on long timescales. Thanks to their
amazingly high precision clock-like properties,
millisecond pulsars are extremely useful for
studying a wide variety of astrophysical topics,
ranging from the equation-of-state of ultradense
matter to testing theories of relativistic gravity,
such as General Relativity. Here I describe current
efforts to search for millisecond pulsars using the
world's largest telescopes, recent results, as well
as the larger goal of using an array of millisecond
pulsars on the sky to make a direct detection of
gravitational waves in the nanohertz regime.