Program

PDF of the Student Week Schedule is available here for download and online here

PDF of the Science Meeting Schedule is available here.

Science Meeting Schedule (v2.1.1 21 June 2014)

Discussion sessions will be interspersed throughout the meeting. The meeting schedule will include a multi-hour lunch break for collaborative work (and/or short hikes). Talk lengths will typically be 15-20 minutes including time for questions. An updated schedule including presentation times will be released next week. You are encouraged to get in touch with others in your session to coordinate talks and topics. For questions about this program, contact David Nice, SOC chair, at iptabanff2014@gmail.com. Some of these titles are place-holders; send updated and refined titles to iptabanff2014@gmail.com.

Sunday, June 22

18:00 Opening reception in Banff Centre Professional Development Center Room 301 Lounge

Monday, June 23

15 minute presentation = 10 minute talk + 5 minute discussion

20 minute presentation = 15 minute talk + 5 minute discussion

Data sets (Chair: Robert Ferdman)

09:00 Welcome from LOC/SOC (R. Ferdman/D. Nice — 10min.)
09:10 Welcome from IPTA Steering Committee Chair (S. Ransom — 10min.)
09:20 Introduction/overview (A Lommen — 20min.)
09:40 [IPTA Project] Combined data release (L. Lentati — 20min.)
10:00 The PPTA data release 2 (M. Kerr — 20min.)
10:20 EPTA data (N. Caballero — 20min.)
10:40 — 11:10 Break
Data sets, continued. (Chair: Delphine Perrodin)
11:10 New NANOGrav data sets (P. Demorest — 20min.)
11:30 Combining results from different telescopes (I. Stairs — 15min.)
11:45 New PPTA pulsar parameters (D. Reardon — 15min.)
12:00 Data provenance (G. Hobbs — 15min.)
12:15 Follow-up discussion (15min.)
12:30 — 15:00 break (Lunch)

Gravitational wave backgrounds (Chair: Sotirios Sanidas)

15:00 [IPTA Project] Searching for an isotropic stochastic background of GWs (R. van Haasteren — 20min.)
15:20 [IPTA Project] IPTA and EPTA efforts to constrain anisotropy in the GW background (S. Taylor/C. Mingarelli — 20min.)
15:40 Re-examining assumptions made in stochastic GW background searches (C. Mingarelli — 20min.)
16:00 Mapping the GW background using PTAs (J. Gair — 15min.)
16:15 Poster Presentations (1 minute per poster)
16:30 — 17:00 break
Gravitational wave backgrounds cont. (Chair: Xavi Siemens)
17:00 Possibility of false detections in Gravitational wave searches (C. Tiburzi — 15min.)
17:15 Building confidence in a PTA detection (N. Cornish — 20min.)
17:35 Follow-up discussion (25min.)
18:00 End

Tuesday, June 24

Gravitational waves: Sources and implications (Chair: Alberto Vecchio)

09:00 Comparing predictions and measurements of the GW stochastic background (S. McWilliams — 20min.)
09:20 Gravitational waves signal prediction (V. Ravi — 20min.)
09:40 Searching for Dual AGN and Binary Supermassive Black Holes: The PTA Progenitor Population (J. Lazio — 20min.)
10:00 Single source or stochastic background? A theoretical perspective (A. Sesana — 20min.)
10:20 — 10:50 break

Continuous gravitational wave sources (Chair: Linqing Wen)

10:50 [IPTA Project] Continuous Wave search (J. Ellis — 20min.)
11:10 Continuous wave searching (Y. Wang — 15min.)
11:25 Continuous wave search in the PPTA data (X. Zhu — 15min.)
11:40 EPTA results on continuous wave sources (P. Brem — 15min.)
11:55 Follow-up discussion (35min.)
12:30 — 15:00 break
14:00 — 14:50 (during break) Break-out session: Future of Arecibo for pulsar work (F. Camilo)

Pulsar Surveys (Chair: Xingjiang Zhu)

15:00 Searches for MSPs: Overview and Predictions (M. McLaughlin — 20 min)
15:20 GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky (GHRSS) survey for MSPs: a SKA precursor (B. Bhattacharyya — 15 min)
15:35 Accelerating binary pulsar search with GPU and FPGA (Jintao Luo — 15 min)
15:50 Current survey sensitivity to MSPs (J. Swiggum — 15 min)
16:05 Pulsar image-based classification system a pattern recognition AI for searching pulsars (W. Zhu — 15 min)
16:20 Follow-up discussion (10min.)
16:30 — 17:00 break

Detection protocol (Chair: Scott Ransom)

17:00: Discussion: Discovery protocol (S. Ransom — 60 min)
18:00 end
Evening Public Events:
17:00 Ask an astronomer event, Maclab Bistro
19:00 Public Talk, Max Bell Auditorium, Max Bell Building (V. Kaspi)

Wednesday, June 25

The ISM (Chair: Dustin Madison)

9:00 Why we need to understand the ISM (W. Coles — 20min.)
9:20 Correcting for intertwined propagation delays (D. Stinebring — 20min.)
9:40 Estimates of scattering effects from the NANOGrav data sets (L. Levin — 15min.)
9:55 Correcting for Interstellar Scattering Delay in High-precision Pulsar timing (N. Palliyaguru — 15min.)
10:10 Contributions of LOFAR to pulsar timing (J. Hessels — 15min.)
10:25 — 10:55 break

Timing software and algorithm development (Chair: Ingrid Stairs)

10:55 Frequency-dependent polarisation for millisecond pulsars and profile fitting (S. Dai, 15min.)
11:10 Application of wideband timing to PTA pulsars (T. Pennucci, 15min.)
11:25 PINT timing package (Jing Luo, 15min.)

Non-gravitational-wave projects using PTA multi-pulsar data.

11:40 Timing and astrometry of MSPs with arrays (J. Roy — 15min.)
11:55 [IPTA Project] Pulsar time scale IPTA project (G. Hobbs — 15min.)
12:10 [IPTA Project] IPTA solar system project (P. Lazarus — 15min.)
12:25—15:00 break (lunch)

Noise budgets and sources of noise. (Chair: Lina Levin)

15:00 Pulsar Timing Noise Budget (J. Cordes — 20min.)
15:20 [IPTA Project] J1713+0747 global campaign (T. Dolch — 20min.)
15:40 Noise budget (M. Lam — 15min.)
15:55 Jitter and spin noise in PPTA Pulsars (R. Shannon — 15min.)
16:10 Noise characteristics of MSPs in EPTA data (N. Caballero — 15min.)
16:25—16:55 break
Discussion Session. (Chair: Rutger van Haasteren)
16:55 Follow-up discussion / lightning talks as warranted (65min.)
18:00 End

Thursday, June 26

Instrumentation (Chair: Gemma Janssen)

09:00 LEAP (C. Bassa — 15min.)
09:15 Timing MSPs with CHIME (V. Kaspi — 15min.)
09:30 MeerKAT (S. Buchner — 15min.)
09:45 Massive scale pulsar observations with the Molonglo telescope (F. Jankowski — 15min.)
10:00 Parkes instrumentation (R. Manchester — 15min.)
10:15 Wideband receivers for DSN antennas (J. Lazio — 15min.)
10:30—11:00 break

Instrumentation, continued. (Chair: Vicky Kaspi)

11:00 Implementation of the LEAP project at the Sardinia Radio Telescope (D. Perrodin — 15min.)
11:15 ARTS: The Apertif Radio Transient System (J. van Leeuwen — 15min.)
11:30 SKA and pulsar timing arrays(M. Kramer — 15min.)
11:45 Follow-up discussion: morning session (15min.)
12:00 Discussion: Outreach (R. Lynch/ C. Mingarelli — 30min.)
12:30—15:00 break (lunch)

Bursts with memory (Chair: Vikram Ravi)

15:00 PPTA constraints on GW bursts with memory (J. Wang — 15min.)
15:15 NANOGrav constraints on GW bursts with memory (D. Madison — 15min.)
15:30 Towards a Gravitational Wave Burst pipeline (B. Christy — 15min.)
15:45-15:55 short break
Discussion and closing (Chair: Patrick Lazarus)
15:55 Follow-up discussion / lightning talks as warranted (60min.)
16:55 Closing remarks (R. Manchester — 20min.)
17:15 End
Conference Dinner: The Maple Leaf Restaurant
Restaurant opens at 18:30

Detection Workshop, Friday 27 June

9:00 Introduction and Welcome (Maura McLaughlin and Gabriela Gonzales — 10min.)
9:10 B1913+16 and the Nobel Prize (Joe Taylor — 20min.)
9:30 IPTA stochastic background sources and detection algorithms (Xavier Siemens — 20min.)
9:50 LIGO/VIRGO stochastic background sources and detection algorithms (Warren Anderson — 20min.)
10:10 IPTA continuous wave sources and detection algorithms (Alberto Vecchio — 20min.)
10:30 LIGO/VIRGO continuous wave sources and detection algorithms (Cristiano Palomba — 20min.)
10:50 Break
11:10 The discovery of FRBs (Duncan Lorimer — 20min.)
11:30 IPTA burst detection and algorithms (Ryan Shannon — 20min.)
11:50 LIGO/VIRGO transient GW detection (Gabriela Gonzalez — 20min.)
12:10 Lunch Break
14:00 Weber's Story (Peter Saulson — 20min.)
14:20 The discovery of the CMB (Rai Weiss — 20min.)
14:40 Time to detection estimates for LIGO/VIRGO (Gabriela Gonzalez — 20min.)
15:00 Time to detection estimates for IPTA (Caterina Tiburzi — 20min.)
15:20 Break
Detection Protocols for GWIC (Chair: Francesco Fidecaro)
15:50 Scott Ransom and David Reitze — 20min.
Critical Review of Detection Protocols (Chair: Joe Taylor)
16:30 Panel with four PTA members and four LIGO/VIRGO members