Jeffrey Hazboun

The image above is titled Rough Seas a painting by Gerhard Mantz. The strongest signal of gravitational waves in the nanohertz band is expected to be the random superposition of waves from super-massive black holes in the cosmological neighborhood; similar to the sum of water waves from all directions out at sea. Detecting the stochastic background with PTAs will help us understand the interactions of super-massive blackholes withe their host galaxies and the history of galaxy mergers back through cosmic time.

I work on signal analysis for pulsar timing arrays, using many millisecond pulsars as a galaxy-scaled gravitational wave observatories. This includes developing the statistics necessary for finding gravitational wave signals amongst a noisy background and writing the data analysis software needed for dealing with real data.

I've recently become interested in multi-band studies, leveraging the knowledge gained in the nanohertz gravitational wave band to understand higher frequency sources observed by space-based and ground-based GW detectors.

I study the myriad propagation effects to which the signals from millisecond pulsars are susceptible as they pass through interstellar space. I develop tailored, astrophysically motivated noise models so that it is easier to uncover the gravitational wave signals present in the timing data from pulsar timing arrays. Along the way we learn about the interstellar medium and the solar wind.

My work in gravitational theory uses the tools of Cartan geometry and symmetry to understand gravity and spacetime. These equations show the correspondence between the various fiels in an ant-de Sitter spacetime in n-dimensions and a conformal theory in (n-1)-dimenions, clearly evident when written down as a quotient manifold in the language of Cartan geometry.