Topic: Pulsar Polarization Arrays
Speaker: Prof. Tao Liu
Coordinates: PCFT C1124, 16:00, Tuesday, April 9
Abstract: Pulsars are known to be extraordinary astronomical clocks and linear polarizers. As astronomical clocks, the millisecond pulsars can be used to form a galaxy-scale interferometer, known as Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTA) since 1980's, to detect nano-Hertz gravitational waves. As linear polarizers, we have proposed recently to construct Pulsar Polarization Arrays (PPA) to explore new phenomena in astrophysics and fundamental physics with a common correlated polarization signal at galaxy scale, based on the readily available polarization data accumulated over decades. In this talk, I will give an introduction to this new methodology, and as one scientific case, demonstrate its strong capability to detect ultralight axion-like wave dark matter (one of the mainstream dark matter candidates). I will also discuss the potential synergization of PPA and PTA in performing this scientific task.