Title:Glitching pulsars as sources of transient gravitational waves

Speaker:Garvin Yim 

(Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics,Peking University)

Time:14:00 pm,June 13 (Thursday) 2024

Venue:C302,New Science Building

Abstract:The spin of neutron stars can be timed with exquisite precision and are seen observationally as pulsars. They are observed to spin-down steadily over long periods but once in a while, they can undergo a rapid and sudden increase in their spin, which is known as a glitch. For some cases, the glitch is followed by a post-glitch recovery. There are several models that predict the emission of (transient) continuous gravitational waves from glitches and their recovery and in this talk, I outline a few of them. Using publicly available data, we compare these models and, after accounting for sky location, we are able to provide a list of high priority targets for gravitational wave searches and for electromagnetic facilities to follow-up with pulsars timing programs. Furthermore, we comment on the recent April 2024 glitch that was observed from the Vela pulsar. Excitingly, our gravitational wave detectors were all operating during this event and we show that we will be able to place constraints on the gravitational wave models for the very first time, if no signal is detected.

Bio:Garvin was born in Manchester, UK and completed an integrated Masters in Physics with Astrophysics at the University of Manchester in 2017. As part of his Masters project, he worked closely with members of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA) to learn more about the pulsar emission mechanism and how it could affect the inferred viewing geometry. Then, as part of his PhD, he worked with Prof. Ian Jones at the University of Southampton on the topic of gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars. He is particularly interested in multi-messenger astronomy, which exploits the synergy between electromagnetic observations and gravitational waves. In September 2022, Garvin moved to the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University as a postdoctoral researcher and is currently working alongside Prof. Lijing Shao and Prof. Renxin Xu.