Nihan Pol
I am a radio and gravitational wave astronomer, currently working as a NANOGrav postdoctoral fellow at Oregon State University and a visiting scientist at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I am a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) and the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA). I am currently the co-chair of the Gravitational Wave Analysis working group in the IPTA.
Before this, I was a Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics (VIDA) postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. I obtained my PhD in Physics and Astronomy from West Virginia University in 2020, where my research focused on modeling the Galactic double neutron star population.
My research focuses on using millisecond pulsars as extremely precise clocks distributed throughout the Galaxy to detect gravitational waves (GWs). These GWs have frequencies on the order of few nanohertz, meaning that they cannot be detected with any of the ground-based gravitational wave detectors on Earth. In fact, in 2023, NANOGrav and our partners in the IPTA showed, for the first time, evidence for the presence of a stochastic gravitational background. We are now working to determine the source of the gravitational wave background, as well as searching for other signals at nanohertz GW frequencies. Apart from this, I am also interested in studying binary pulsar systems and modeling the pulsar population in the Galaxy.
news
Dec 31, 2023 | Our NANOGrav 15 yr results highlighted as among the top scientific breakthroughs of the year by many outlets. |
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Oct 15, 2023 | Started a NANOGrav postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon State University. |
Sep 1, 2023 | Started a position as visiting scientist at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. |
Aug 4, 2023 | Interview with Scientific American talking about the latest NANOGrav results and the search for anisotropy is now published. |
Jul 10, 2023 | Interview with New Scientist magazine talking about the latest NANOGrav results and how we can determine the source of the gravitational wave background. |
selected publications
- The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Anisotropy in the Gravitational-wave Background\apjl, Oct 2023
- The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars\apjl, Jul 2023
- The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background\apjl, Jul 2023
- Forecasting Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity to Anisotropy in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background\apj, Dec 2022
- Disentangling Multiple Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Sources in PTA Data Sets\apj, Oct 2022
- The International Pulsar Timing Array second data release: Search for an isotropic gravitational wave background\mnras, Mar 2022
- Insights into the Milky Way pulsar–black hole population using radio and gravitational wave observationsarXiv e-prints, Sep 2021
- On the Detectability of Ultracompact Binary Pulsar Systems\apj, May 2021
- The Location of Young Pulsar PSR J0837-2454: Galactic Halo or Local Supernova Remnant?\apj, Apr 2021
- Astrophysics Milestones for Pulsar Timing Array Gravitational-wave Detection\apjl, Apr 2021
- The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Search for an Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational-wave Background\apjl, Dec 2020
- Asymmetric mass ratios for bright double neutron-star mergers\nat, Jul 2020
- An Updated Galactic Double Neutron Star Merger Rate Based on Radio Pulsar PopulationsResearch Notes of the American Astronomical Society, Feb 2020
- Estimates of Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measures from Cosmological Simulations\apj, Dec 2019
- The Virtues of Time and Cadence for Pulsars and Fast Transients\baas, May 2019
- Radio Pulsar Populations\baas, May 2019
- Future Prospects for Ground-based Gravitational-wave Detectors: The Galactic Double Neutron Star Merger Rate Revisited\apj, Jan 2019
- A Direct Measurement of Sense of Rotation of PSR J0737-3039A\apj, Jan 2018
- Seyfert 1 composite spectrum using SDSS Legacy survey data\mnras, Feb 2017