Abstract
Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars, with most of the known examples located within our Milky Way Galaxy. The class of “millisecond pulsars” (MSPs) have remarkably stable pulse periods, with a stability over long intervals comparable to that of the best atomic frequency standards. Timing observations of such pulsars in binary systems with another star have been used to make the most stringent tests of general relativity in strong gravitational fields. Observations of many MSPs, widely distributed across the sky and forming a “pulsar timing array” (PTA), have been used to set limits on the strength of the gravitational-wave background at nanohertz frequencies. These limits are beginning to constrain current ideas about the formation and evolution of supermassive binary black holes in the cores of distant galaxies. PTA observations can also be used to define a “pulsar timescale” that can limit or measure instabilities in terrestrial timescales over intervals of years and decades. Pulsar timescales form a useful “secondary standard” that is totally independent of terrestrial time and frequency standards and will be continuous for billions of years.
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- 1.
For an up-to-date list of the currently known pulsars and their basic properties, see http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/psrcat and Ref. (Manchester et al. 2005).
- 2.
The detection of binary orbit decay due to the emission of gravitational waves is generally termed an “indirect” detection of gravitational waves in contrast to the recent direct detection of a gravitational-wave burst by LIGO (Abbott et al. 2016).
- 3.
The B pulsar disappeared from view in 2008, most likely because of spin-axis precession, but it is expected to return to view sometime in the next 20 years (Perera et al. 2010).
- 4.
Timing residuals are the difference between observed and predicted ToAs, where the predictions are based on a model for the pulsar, including its astrometric parameters (position, proper motion, etc.) and timing parameters (pulse period, slow-down rate, dispersion measure and binary parameters if applicable) as well as the solar system ephemeris used in the analysis.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Demetrios Matsakis for providing us with the 4-year data sets for the rubidium fountain clocks at US Naval Observatory. We also thank Michael Kramer and Ryan Shannon for providing Figs. 30.2 and 30.3, respectively. The IPTA is a consortium of three PTAs, and we acknowledge the efforts of all members of these PTAs in the creation of the IPTA data sets. The Parkes radio telescope is part of the Australia Telescope which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO.
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Manchester, R.N., Guo, L., Hobbs, G., Coles, W.A. (2017). Pulsars: Celestial Clocks. In: Arias, E., Combrinck, L., Gabor, P., Hohenkerk, C., Seidelmann, P. (eds) The Science of Time 2016. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59909-0_30
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