Research
Search for Nano-Hertz Gravitational Waves
The Indian Pulsar Timing Array is an experiment aimed at detection of Gravitational waves (GWs) in the sub-microHertz frequency range by observing an ensemble of millisecond pulsars (MSPs). GWs from both the stochastic GW background as well as the individual sources like supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) leave an imprint on the time-of-arrival (TOA) of the pulsed emission from MSPs, which could be detected with high precision due to the clock-like stability of these pulsars.
The InPTA collaboration monitors regularly a sample of around ~25 bright MSPs with the uGMRT. The observations are done at low frquency bands making InPTA the only PTA to be able to characterise the interstellar medium with high accuracy. The InPTA data which is primarily used to detect GWs can also be used for several auxilliary pulsar like CME events, interstellar medium studies, probes to general relativity, emission mechanisms, etc.
| Group name | Group Members | Group Work |
|---|---|---|
| Observation | Debabrata Deb, Prerna Rana, Pratik Tarafdar, Prabu Thiagraj, Bhal Chandra Joshi |
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| Backup and Data reduction | Debabrata Deb, Amarnath, Hemanga Tahbildar, Kavya Shaji, Yogesh Mann, Shantanu Desai |
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| Education and Public Outreach | Fazal Kareem, Neel Kolhe, Manjari Bagchi, Aman Srivastava, Avinash kumar paladi, Churchill Dwivedi |
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| Cyber Infrastructure | Fazal Kareem, Bhal Chandra Joshi, Shantanu Desai, Adya Shukla |
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| Instrumentation | Prabu Thiagraj, Yashwant Gupta, Bhal Chandra Joshi | |
| Diversity and Equity | Bhal Chandra Joshi, Achamveedu Gopakumar, Manjari Bagchi, Shantanu Desai | |