Return of the Big Glitcher: NICER timing and glitches of PSR J0537-6910
Wynn C. G. Ho, Cristobal M. Espinoza, Zaven Arzoumanian, Teruaki, Enoto, Tsubasa Tamba, Danai Antonopoulou, Michal Bejger, Sebastien Guillot,, Brynmor Haskell, Paul S. Ray

TL;DR
This paper presents a detailed 2.7-year NICER timing analysis of the prolific glitching pulsar PSR J0537-6910, revealing new glitches, a long-term braking index of -1.25, and insights into glitch behavior and gravitational wave search potential.
Contribution
It provides the first long-term, phase-connected timing model for PSR J0537-6910, detects 8 new glitches, and analyzes glitch activity and braking index over an extended period.
Findings
Detected 8 new glitches since 2011.
Measured a long-term braking index of -1.25.
Confirmed the glitch size and time-to-next-glitch correlation.
Abstract
PSR J0537-6910, also known as the Big Glitcher, is the most prolific glitching pulsar known, and its spin-induced pulsations are only detectable in X-ray. We present results from analysis of 2.7 years of NICER timing observations, from 2017 August to 2020 April. We obtain a rotation phase-connected timing model for the entire timespan, which overlaps with the third observing run of LIGO/Virgo, thus enabling the most sensitive gravitational wave searches of this potentially strong gravitational wave-emitting pulsar. We find that the short-term braking index between glitches decreases towards a value of 7 or lower at longer times since the preceding glitch. By combining NICER and RXTE data, we measure a long-term braking index n=-1.25+/-0.01. Our analysis reveals 8 new glitches, the first detected since 2011, near the end of RXTE, with a total NICER and RXTE glitch activity of 8.88x10^-7…
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