Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Improving Pulsar Timing Through Interstellar Scatter Correction, Daniel Hemberger

Honors Papers

Though pulsar timing has confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, no technique has directly detected them. Jenet et al. state the requirements for the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) to make a significant detection of the stochastic gravitational wave background within five years. By employing the scintillation information in observations for each pulsar at every epoch, I believe interstellar scattering, an underestimated source of timing noise, can be corrected enough for the PPTA to meet these requirements. The improved detection threshold will help answer important questions about black hole mergers, galaxy evolution, and gravitation.