Speaker
Prof.
A. Gopakumar
(Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai)
Description
Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) thrive at the centres of massive galaxies and galaxy mergers
can lead to SMBH binaries with orbital periods of years. Such systems emit nano-hertz
gravitational waves (GWs) which can be detected by employing networks of precisely
timed milli-second pulsars.
The rapidly maturing Pulsar Timing Arrays like NANOGrav, EPTA, InPTA, CPTA and PPTA, are expected
to detect and characterise such GWs in the very near future under
the auspices of the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) consortium.
I will argue why this consortium has the potential to pursue
persistent multi-messenger nano-hertz GW astronomy during the Square Kilometre Array era
with a specific example.
