Nihan Pol

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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.
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

  1. The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Anisotropy in the Gravitational-wave Background
    Gabriella Agazie, Akash Anumarlapudi, Anne M. Archibald, and 90 more authors
    \apjl, Oct 2023
  2. The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars
    Gabriella Agazie, Md Faisal Alam, Akash Anumarlapudi, and 98 more authors
    \apjl, Jul 2023
  3. The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-wave Background
    Gabriella Agazie, Akash Anumarlapudi, Anne M. Archibald, and 112 more authors
    \apjl, Jul 2023
  4. Forecasting Pulsar Timing Array Sensitivity to Anisotropy in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background
    Nihan Pol, Stephen R. Taylor, and Joseph D. Romano
    \apj, Dec 2022
  5. Disentangling Multiple Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Sources in PTA Data Sets
    Andrew R. Kaiser, Nihan S. Pol, Maura A. McLaughlin, and 7 more authors
    \apj, Oct 2022
  6. The International Pulsar Timing Array second data release: Search for an isotropic gravitational wave background
    J. Antoniadis, Z. Arzoumanian, S. Babak, and 123 more authors
    \mnras, Mar 2022
  7. Insights into the Milky Way pulsar–black hole population using radio and gravitational wave observations
    Nihan Pol, Maura McLaughlin, and Duncan Lorimer
    arXiv e-prints, Sep 2021
  8. On the Detectability of Ultracompact Binary Pulsar Systems
    Nihan Pol, Maura McLaughlin, Duncan R. Lorimer, and 1 more author
    \apj, May 2021
  9. The Location of Young Pulsar PSR J0837-2454: Galactic Halo or Local Supernova Remnant?
    Nihan Pol, Sarah Burke-Spolaor, Natasha Hurley-Walker, and 8 more authors
    \apj, Apr 2021
  10. Astrophysics Milestones for Pulsar Timing Array Gravitational-wave Detection
    Nihan S. Pol, Stephen R. Taylor, Luke Zoltan Kelley, and 50 more authors
    \apjl, Apr 2021
  11. The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Search for an Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational-wave Background
    Zaven Arzoumanian, Paul T. Baker, Harsha Blumer, and 59 more authors
    \apjl, Dec 2020
  12. Asymmetric mass ratios for bright double neutron-star mergers
    R. D. Ferdman, P. C. C. Freire, B. B. P. Perera, and 11 more authors
    \nat, Jul 2020
  13. An Updated Galactic Double Neutron Star Merger Rate Based on Radio Pulsar Populations
    Nihan Pol, Maura McLaughlin, and Duncan R. Lorimer
    Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, Feb 2020
  14. Estimates of Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measures from Cosmological Simulations
    N. Pol, M. T. Lam, M. A. McLaughlin, and 2 more authors
    \apj, Dec 2019
  15. The Virtues of Time and Cadence for Pulsars and Fast Transients
    Ryan Lynch, Paul Brook, Shami Chatterjee, and 7 more authors
    \baas, May 2019
  16. Radio Pulsar Populations
    Duncan Lorimer, Nihan Pol, Kaustubh Rajwade, and 9 more authors
    \baas, May 2019
  17. Future Prospects for Ground-based Gravitational-wave Detectors: The Galactic Double Neutron Star Merger Rate Revisited
    Nihan Pol, Maura McLaughlin, and Duncan R. Lorimer
    \apj, Jan 2019
  18. A Direct Measurement of Sense of Rotation of PSR J0737-3039A
    Nihan Pol, Maura McLaughlin, Michael Kramer, and 3 more authors
    \apj, Jan 2018
  19. Seyfert 1 composite spectrum using SDSS Legacy survey data
    Nihan Pol, and Yogesh Wadadekar
    \mnras, Feb 2017