Stability of pulsar rotational and orbital periods

TL;DR

This paper discusses the stability of millisecond and binary pulsars' rotational and orbital periods, emphasizing their importance in astronomy and time-keeping, and analyzing how noise affects parameter estimation.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of noise impacts on pulsar timing residuals and their implications for astrophysical and geophysical research.

Findings

White noise is predictable and does not hinder interpretation.

Low-frequency noise degrades the accuracy of pulsar parameter estimates.

Noise influences the stability of pulsar-based time scales.

Abstract

Millisecond and binary pulsars are the most stable astronomical standards of frequency. They can be applied to solving a number of problems in astronomy and time-keeping metrology including the search for a stochastic gravitational wave background in the early universe, testing general relativity, and establishing a new time-scale. The full exploration of pulsar properties requires that proper unbiased estimates of spin and orbital parameters of the pulsar be obtained. These estimates depend essentially on the random noise components present in pulsar timing residuals. The instrumental white noise has predictable statistical properties and makes no harm for interpretation of timing observations, while the astrophysical/geophysical low-frequency noise corrupts them, thus, reducing the quality of tests of general relativity and decreasing the stability of the pulsar time scale.