Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747

Most millisecond pulsars, like essentially all other radio pulsars, show timing errors well in excess of what is expected from additive radiometer noise alone. We show that changes in amplitude, shape, and pulse phase for the millisecond pulsar J1713+0747 cause this excess error. These changes appea...

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Main Authors:	Shannon, Ryan, Cordes, J.
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	2012
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/32081

id	curtin-20.500.11937-32081
recordtype	eprints
spelling	curtin-20.500.11937-320812017-09-13T15:17:10Z Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747 Shannon, Ryan Cordes, J. Most millisecond pulsars, like essentially all other radio pulsars, show timing errors well in excess of what is expected from additive radiometer noise alone. We show that changes in amplitude, shape, and pulse phase for the millisecond pulsar J1713+0747 cause this excess error. These changes appear to be uncorrelated from one pulse period to the next. The resulting time of arrival (TOA) variations are correlated across a wide frequency range and is observed with different backend processors on different days, confirming that they are intrinsic in origin and not an instrumental effect or caused by strongly frequency-dependent interstellar scattering. Centroids of single pulses show an rms phase variation ≈40 μs, which dominates the timing error and is the same phase jitter phenomenon long known in slower spinning, canonical pulsars. We show that the amplitude modulations of single pulses are modestly correlated with their arrival time fluctuations. We also demonstrate that single-pulse variations are completely consistent with arrival time variations of pulse profiles obtained by integrating N pulses such that the arrival-time error decreases proportional to 1/(square root of)N. We investigate methods for correcting TOAs for these pulse-shape changes, including multi-component TOA fitting and principal component analysis. These techniques are not found to improve the timing precision of the observations. We conclude that when pulse-shape changes dominate timing errors, the timing precision of PSR J1713+0747 can be only improved by averaging over a larger number of pulses. 2012 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/32081 10.1088/0004-637X/761/1/64 unknown
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	Curtin University Malaysia
building	Curtin Institutional Repository
collection	Online Access
description	Most millisecond pulsars, like essentially all other radio pulsars, show timing errors well in excess of what is expected from additive radiometer noise alone. We show that changes in amplitude, shape, and pulse phase for the millisecond pulsar J1713+0747 cause this excess error. These changes appear to be uncorrelated from one pulse period to the next. The resulting time of arrival (TOA) variations are correlated across a wide frequency range and is observed with different backend processors on different days, confirming that they are intrinsic in origin and not an instrumental effect or caused by strongly frequency-dependent interstellar scattering. Centroids of single pulses show an rms phase variation ≈40 μs, which dominates the timing error and is the same phase jitter phenomenon long known in slower spinning, canonical pulsars. We show that the amplitude modulations of single pulses are modestly correlated with their arrival time fluctuations. We also demonstrate that single-pulse variations are completely consistent with arrival time variations of pulse profiles obtained by integrating N pulses such that the arrival-time error decreases proportional to 1/(square root of)N. We investigate methods for correcting TOAs for these pulse-shape changes, including multi-component TOA fitting and principal component analysis. These techniques are not found to improve the timing precision of the observations. We conclude that when pulse-shape changes dominate timing errors, the timing precision of PSR J1713+0747 can be only improved by averaging over a larger number of pulses.
format	Journal Article
author	Shannon, Ryan Cordes, J.
spellingShingle	Shannon, Ryan Cordes, J. Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
author_facet	Shannon, Ryan Cordes, J.
author_sort	Shannon, Ryan
title	Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
title_short	Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
title_full	Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
title_fullStr	Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
title_full_unstemmed	Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747
title_sort	pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: a case study of psr j1713+0747
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/32081
first_indexed	2018-09-06T21:50:58Z
last_indexed	2018-09-06T21:50:58Z
_version_	1610896542225399808

Pulse intensity modulation and the timing stability of millisecond pulsars: A case study of PSR J1713+0747

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