Studying the solar system with the International Pulsar Timing Array
R. N. Caballero, Y. J. Guo, K. J. Lee, P. Lazarus, D. J. Champion, G., Desvignes, M. Kramer, K. Plant, Z. Arzoumanian, M. Bailes, C. G. Bassa, N. D., R. Bhat, A. Brazier, M. Burgay, S. Burke-Spolaor, S. J. Chamberlin, S., Chatterjee, I. Cognard, J. M. Cordes, S. Dai, P. Demorest

TL;DR
This paper uses pulsar timing data to improve constraints on solar system masses, detect unmodelled objects, and test the accuracy of different solar-system ephemerides, demonstrating the method's sensitivity and potential for new discoveries.
Contribution
It presents the first PTA-based constraints on asteroid-belt objects and compares multiple SSEs, significantly improving planetary mass measurements and establishing sensitivity to unmodelled objects.
Findings
Planetary mass constraints improved by up to 20 times.
First PTA-based mass measurement of Ceres.
Established sensitivity limits on unmodelled objects and dark matter clumps.
Abstract
Pulsar-timing analyses are sensitive to errors in the solar-system ephemerides (SSEs) that timing models utilise to estimate the location of the solar-system barycentre, the quasi-inertial reference frame to which all recorded pulse times-of-arrival are referred. Any error in the SSE will affect all pulsars, therefore pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) are a suitable tool to search for such errors and impose independent constraints on relevant physical parameters. We employ the first data release of the International Pulsar Timing Array to constrain the masses of the planet-moons systems and to search for possible unmodelled objects (UMOs) in the solar system. We employ ten SSEs from two independent research groups, derive and compare mass constraints of planetary systems, and derive the first PTA mass constraints on asteroid-belt objects. Constraints on planetary-system masses have been…
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