centra

Speaker: Riccardo Della Monica (CENTRA, IST)

Title: Timing gravity with pulsars in the strong field

Abstract: The centre of the Milky Way has been subject of an intense observational program over the past thirty years. This led to the discovery of a point source supermassive object named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) whose inferred mass is ~ 4 million solar masses. Thanks to the precise tracking of the motion of stars in its surroundings and the direct imaging of accreting matter in this region, we can now unambiguously identify this object as a supermassive black-hole (SMBH). A promising possibility to reach new experimental frontiers in black hole physics is the existence of detectable pulsars on tight relativistic orbits in the Galactic Center. While, up to date, no pulsar has been directly observed in orbit around Sgr A*, future observing facilities like the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) promise not only to reach this goal, but also to be able to perform timing analysis of such sources. In this talk I will show the recent progress in the modeling of pulsar timing in the Galactic Center and the avenues that the successful detection of a pulsar in this environment would open for unparalleled tests of gravity.