IIT Hyderabad scientists within ‘InPTA’ paving way to charting Interstellar Weather

No other radio telescope among the other PTA consortia has sensitivity equal to that of InPTA at low frequencies.

Sangareddy: An Indo-Japanese team of 38 radio-astronomers have measured the delays in the arrival of radio pulses from special types of neutron stars called millisecond pulsars, which are crucial for the discovery of low-frequency gravitational waves. The observation will be very key in charting the Interstellar weather.

According to an IIT-Hyderabad release, the Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) collaboration was the only PTA consortia which do simultaneous dual frequency observations of millisecond pulsars over widely separated lower and higher frequency bands, which is critical for our ultra-high precision measurement of interstellar noise. No other radio telescope among the other PTA consortia has sensitivity equal to that of InPTA at low frequencies.

The InPTA recently published its first official Data Release. Prof Shantanu Desai from the Physics department of IIT Hyderabad, PhD student Aman Srivastava, B.Tech student Divyansh Kharbanda, and IITH alumnus Raghav Girgaonkar have coauthored this research article which got published recently in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. The data release stems from three and a half years of observation using the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) near Pune.

The Indo-Japanese team of 38 radioastronomers measures delays in the arrival of radio pulses from special types of neutron stars called millisecond pulsars, which are crucial for the discovery of low-frequency gravitational waves. InPTA has joined hands with similar teams from the USA, Europe and Australia to detect these tiny, elusive ripples in spacetime, named nanohertz gravitational waves.

“This research helps us better understand our universe and our role in it. However, one should remember wifi (ubiquitous) in daily life was a spin-off of research in radio astronomy while searching for radio bursts from primordial black holes. The precision measurements which we are making use state of the art electronics and communication systems and also involve the application of novel data analysis and data mining tools. These could have potential industrial applications,” Prof Shantanu said.

IIT-H director Prof B S Murty appreciated the team’s efforts.