Pulsar Timing with the Fermi LAT

TL;DR

This paper discusses methods for precise pulsar timing using Fermi LAT data, enabling detailed analysis of pulsar behavior and multiwavelength follow-up through advanced timing techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a maximum likelihood method for unbinned photon data to improve pulsar timing accuracy with Fermi LAT.

Findings

Determined pulsar spindown behavior and detected glitches.

Achieved precise pulsar position measurements.

Enabled detailed multiwavelength follow-up.

Abstract

We present an overview of precise pulsar timing using data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on Fermi. We describe the analysis techniques including a maximum likelihood method for determining pulse times of arrival from unbinned photon data. In addition to determining the spindown behavior of the pulsars and detecting glitches and timing noise, such timing analyses allow the precise determination of the pulsar position, thus enabling detailed multiwavelength follow up.