IPTA 2017 Science Program

Monday 03 July

I. Radio telescopes (09:50 - 11:00) (chair: Ismaël Cognard)

• G.Theureau, Welcome address (10’)
• Delphine Perrodin, Pulsar science at the Sardinia Radio Telescope (15+5’)
• Fronefield Crawford, The Arecibo remote command center network (15+5’)
• Renée Spiewak, Secondary Science with the GBT North Celestial Cap Survey (15+5’)

11:00 – 11:30 coffee break

• Xinping Deng, Observing with a phased array feed at the Parkes Telescope (15+5’)
• Li Di, A Pulsar-Galaxies-MW-FRB Commensal Survey Plan for the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (15+5’)
• Jingbo Wang, New radio telescope -- QTT 110 meter and Tianma 65 meter radio telescope and Pulsar Timing Array in China (15+5’)

12:30 – 14:20 lunch break

II. Timing data (14:20 - 15:40) (chair: Gregory Desvignes)

• Richard Manchester, PPTA project (15+5’)
• Kuo Liu, Overview and update on the LEAP (15+5’)
• James Mc Kee, new backend generation EPTA data set (15+5’)
• David Nice, NANOGrav overview (15+5’)

15:40 – 16:10 coffee break

• Andrea Lommen, Precision timing with NICER (15+5’)
• Peter Gentile, Polarization calibration of NANOGrav's Arecibo data set (15+5’)

Discussions (16:50-18:00) (chair: Stefan Oslowski)

• DR2 and future datasets, including new PTA contributions (FAST, GMRT, MeerKAT...)
• Cyber-i discussions and a demo (R. Ferdman)

Tuesday 04 July

I. Updates from PTA’s analysis groups (09:30-10:40) (chair: Antoine Petiteau

• Steve Taylor, Update on NANOGrav Data Analysis Methods (20+5’)
• Chiara Mingarelli, EPTA data analysis overview. (20+5')
• Ryan Shannon, Update on PPTA data analysis. (20+5’)

10:50 – 11:20 coffee break

II. PTA vs ephemeris (11:20-12:20) (chair: Nicolas Caballero)

• Stephen Taylor, Gravitational-wave constraints in the presence of solar-system ephemeris uncertainties. (15+5’)
• Joseph Lazio, Solar System Ephemerides, Pulsar Timing, and Navigation. (15+5’)
• Abhinav Jindal, Constraints on Planet Nine and distant solar system objects using Pulsar Timing (15+5’)

12:00 – 14:20 lunch break

III. Search methods and algorithms (14:20-16:00) (chair: Steve Taylor)

• Siyuan Chen, Implications on Astrophysical model selection from the PPTA upper limit. (15+5')
• Janna Goldstein, Sky localisation of monochromatic GW sources in pulsar timing array data using the null stream method. (15+5’)
• Chiara Mingarelli, Detection Prospects of Local Continuous Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Sources with Pulsar Timing Arrays. (15+5’)
• Naoyuki Yonemaru, New detection method for ultra-low frequency gravitational waves with pulsar spin-down rate statistics. (15+5’)
• Paul Baker, Enterprise: a new PTA data analysis suite. (15+5’)

16:00 – 16:30 coffee break

Discussions (16:30-17:30): (chair: Alberto Sesana)

• Scientific requirements for a detection protocol
• Publication and communication policy

Wednesday 05 July [external attendees, invited reviews]

I. Theory (chair: Gilles Theureau)

• 09:00 Alexandre Le Tiec, General relativistic dynamics of binary black holes
• 09:35 Luc Blanchet, Gravitational waves and the problem of motion in GR.
• 10:10 Eric Gourgoulhon, Black Hole observations and the no-hair theorem

10:45 – 11:15 coffee break

II. experimentations (chair: Stanislas Babak)

• 11:15 Matteo Barsuglia, LIGO and Virgo: status and next steps
• 11:45 Antoine Petiteau, The LISA mission

12:20 – 14:00 lunch break

• 14:00 Bess Fang, Low Frequency Gravitational Wave Detection with Ground Based Atom Interferometer Arrays
• 14:35 Guillaume Patanchon, B-mode measurements with Planck and future missions
• 15:10 Guy Perrin, The GRAVITY VLT experiment and the central BH

15:45 – 16:15 coffee break

III. PTAs : the low frequency end (chair: Andrea Lommen)

• 16:15 Megan De Cesar, The Second IPTA Data Release and Considerations for Future Releases
• 16:50 Michele Vallisneri, Current limits from PTAs and current modeling approaches
• 17:25 Irina Dvorkin, Measuring the stochastic gravitational-wave background from stalling massive black-hole binaries with pulsar-timing arrays

Discussions (18:00-18:45) : multi-messenger information (chair: Andrea Lommen)

19:15 Cocktail-dinner

Thursday 06 July

I. Sources of noise (9:30-10:30) (chair: Caterina Tiburzi)

• Paul Brook, Pulse profile variability in the NANOGrav 11-years data set (15+5’)
• Aditya Parthasarathy Madapusi, Profile variability studies for the PPTA pulsars (15+5’)
• Michael Lam, The NANOGrav 9-year Data Set : excess noise in MSP arrival times (15+5’)

10:30 – 11:00 coffee break

II. ISM effects (11:00-12:00) (chair: Lindley Lentati)

• CaterinaTiburzi, The effect of the Solar wind in low-frequency observations of pulsars (15+5’)
• Megan Jones, Analysis of DM variations in the NANOGrav 9-years data set (15+5’)
• Stefan Oslowski, Probing the extremes of ISM with LOFAR (15+5’)

12:00 – 14:00 lunch break

III. Consortium projects (14:00-15:00) (chair: Kuo Liu)

• Li Guo, A pulsar-based time standard with the International Pulsar Timing Array (15+5')
• Tim Dolch, Analyzing Single Pulses in the J1713 24-hr Global Campaign (15+5’)
• Nicolas Caballero, Planetary ephemeris (IPTA project) (15+5’)

IV. Other projects using PTA data (15:00-15:40)(chair: Kuo Liu)

• Jiang Dong, Build advanced national frequency standard by Pdot of pulsar (15+5’)
• Jingbo Wang, Comparison of pulsar position from timing and Very Long Baseline Astrometry (15+5’)

15:40 – 16:10 coffee break

• Xiaojin Liu, Measuring the second derivative of the spin frequency in precise pulsar timing (15+5’)
• Golam Shaifullah, Spectral indices of MSPs (15+5’)
• Mallory Roberts, X-ray luminosity of pulsars with accurate distances (15+5’)

Discussions (17:10-18:00): (chair: Dan Stinebring)

• new IPTA consortium projects

Friday 07 July

I. New instrumental/numerical/algorithmic developments (9:30-10:30) (chair: Lucas Guillemot)

• Lindley Lentati, Cobra : bayesian approach to pulsar searching (15+5’)
• Keeisi Caballero, The Centre for Advanced Radio Astronomy (15+5’)
• Jing Luo, PINT a new generation of high precision timing package (15+5’)

10:30 – 11:00 coffee break

• Di Li, A database-based pulsar-pulse search pipeline (15+5’)
• Jeffrey Hazboun, The NANOGrav pulsar signal simulator (15+5’)

II. The IPTA Diversity Committee (11:40-12:30) (chair : Delphine Perrodin and Chiara Mingarelli

• TBD, IPTA Code of Conduct / anti-harassment policy
• TBD, Development of interactive sessions promoting diversity-related issues
• TBD, Accessibility of future IPTA meetings

12:30 – 14:20 lunch break

Discussions (14:20-15:20) : (chair: Gemma Janssen)

• PTA observations in the SKA era
• Future instrumentation and future analysis tools