Related papers: Observing Radio Pulsars in the Galactic Centre wit…

Despite intensive searches, the only pulsar within 0.1 pc of the central black hole in our Galaxy, Sgr A*, is a radio-loud magnetar. Since magnetars are rare among the Galactic neutron star population, and a large number of massive stars…

Precision pulsar timing at the level of tens to hundreds of nanoseconds allows detection of nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) at the cores of merging galaxies and, potentially, from exotic…

The galactic central black hole Sgr A* exhibits outbursts of radiation in the near infrared (so-called IR flares). One model of these events consists in a hotspot orbiting on the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) of the hole. These…

Massive black holes are key ingredients of the assembly and evolution of cosmic structures. Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) currently provide the only means to observe gravitational radiation from massive black hole binary systems with masses…

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars emitting intense electromagnetic radiation that is detected on Earth as regular and precisely timed pulses. By exploiting their extreme regularity and comparing the real arrival times with a…

In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the potential of the galactic center as a probe of general relativity in the strong field. There is almost certainly a black hole at Sgr A* in the galactic center, and this would…

Pulsar timing arrays record gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries at two spacetime points: an Earth term, measured when the wave passes the Earth, and a pulsar term, measured when the wave passed each pulsar at an…

Understanding the magnetised Universe is a major challenge in modern astrophysics, and cosmic magnetism has been acknowledged as one of the science key drivers of the most ambitious radio instrument ever planned, the SKA telescope. With…

Pulsars (PSRs) orbiting intermediate or supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies and globular clusters are known as Extreme Mass Ratio Binaries (EMRBs) and have been identified as precision probes of strong-field GR. For…

The main goal of pulsar timing array experiments is to detect correlated signals such as nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves. Pulsar timing data collected in dense monitoring campaigns can also be used to study the stars themselves,…

We have begun an exciting era for gravitational wave detection, as several world-leading experiments are breaching the threshold of anticipated signal strengths. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are pan-Galactic gravitational wave detectors that…

We report 21-yr timing of one of the most precise pulsars: PSR J1713+0747. Its pulse times of arrival are well modeled by a comprehensive pulsar binary model including its three-dimensional orbit and a noise model that incorporates…

During the motion of a binary pulsar around the Galactic center, the pulsar and its companion experience a wind of dark-matter particles that can affect the orbital motion through dynamical friction. We show that this effect produces a…

An outstanding question in modern Physics is whether general relativity (GR) is a complete description of gravity among bodies at macroscopic scales. Currently, the best experiments supporting this hypothesis are based on high-precision…

According to some models, there may be a significant population of radio pulsars in the Galactic center. In principle, a beam from one of these pulsars could pass close to the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center, be deflected, and…

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are ensembles of millisecond pulsars observed for years to decades. The primary goal of PTAs is to study gravitational-wave astronomy at nanohertz frequencies, with secondary goals of undertaking other…

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are designed to detect gravitational waves with periods from several months to several years, e.g. those produced by by wide supermassive black-hole binaries in the centers of distant galaxies. Here we show that…

Pulsars are remarkably precise "celestial clocks" that can be used to explore many different aspects of physics and astrophysics. In this article I give a brief summary of pulsar properties and describe some of the applications of pulsar…

We summarize the current state of polarization observations of Sagittarius A*, the compact radio source and supermassive black hole candidate in the Galactic Center. These observations are providing new tools for understanding accretion…

We report on the results of new simulations of near-infrared (NIR) observations of the Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) counterpart associated with the super-massive black hole at the Galactic Center. The observations have been carried out using the…