Syllabus

  • The GW landscape: introducing GW theory and astrophysics across the spectrum.
  • Stochastic GW backgrounds: understanding how to probe GW backgrounds through statistics; n-point correlations; Gaussians and other probability density functions.
  • Pulsars & pulsar timing: pulsar timing response to GWs; overlap reduction function for PTAs; cross-power spectrum of timing deviations caused by a SGWB.
  • Sources & signals: supermassive black-hole binaries generating individual GWs and a GW background; cosmological sources.
  • Brief tour of astro-statistics: frequentist & Bayesian statistics, parameter estimation, model selection.
  • Numerical Bayesian techniques: MCMC sampling; optimizing proposal distributions; stopping criteria; evidence and odds ratio evaluation.
  • PTA data analysis techniques: noise sources for PTAs; marginalizing over the timing ephemeris; the PTA data model; structure of the PTA likelihood; practical recipes for pulsar noise characterization, searching for the GW background, single GW sources.