Probing the Interstellar Medium by Monitoring Millisecond Pulsar Brightness
Mentor 1
Joe Swiggum
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
5-4-2019 1:30 PM
End Date
5-4-2019 3:30 PM
Description
This research relies on the detection of radio signals emitted from millisecond pulsars, incredibly dense neutron stars that beam light from their magnetic poles as they spin hundreds of times per second. The signals are detected as regular pulses, corresponding to a pulsar’s emission region crossing our line of sight as it spins. The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) works to examine millisecond pulsar (MSP) signals from a variety of sources in order to detect gravitational waves, using the Green Bank telescope and Arecibo Observatory in West Virginia and Puerto Rico, respectively. I measured flux densities (effective brightness) from NANOGrav’s 11-year data set to construct a database for 23 MSPs and generated probability distribution functions (PDF) for each source’s set of flux densities. In each case, chi square distributions described by three parameters were fit to the measured flux densities. Included on the poster are a full set of flux density PDF parameters. Moving forward, I plan to investigate correlations between the PDF parameters and observables such as spin period, position, and dispersion measure for the purposes of millisecond pulsar population modeling.
Probing the Interstellar Medium by Monitoring Millisecond Pulsar Brightness
Union Wisconsin Room
This research relies on the detection of radio signals emitted from millisecond pulsars, incredibly dense neutron stars that beam light from their magnetic poles as they spin hundreds of times per second. The signals are detected as regular pulses, corresponding to a pulsar’s emission region crossing our line of sight as it spins. The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) works to examine millisecond pulsar (MSP) signals from a variety of sources in order to detect gravitational waves, using the Green Bank telescope and Arecibo Observatory in West Virginia and Puerto Rico, respectively. I measured flux densities (effective brightness) from NANOGrav’s 11-year data set to construct a database for 23 MSPs and generated probability distribution functions (PDF) for each source’s set of flux densities. In each case, chi square distributions described by three parameters were fit to the measured flux densities. Included on the poster are a full set of flux density PDF parameters. Moving forward, I plan to investigate correlations between the PDF parameters and observables such as spin period, position, and dispersion measure for the purposes of millisecond pulsar population modeling.
