PSR J0437-4715: The Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy 2019-2020 Observational Campaign

TL;DR

This paper reports on a year-long observational campaign of the millisecond pulsar J0437-4715 using Argentine radio telescopes, demonstrating high-precision timing, scintillation analysis, and constraints on gravitational waves, enhancing pulsar timing array sensitivity.

Contribution

It presents the first long-term, high-cadence pulsar observations from IAR, characterizing timing noise, scintillation effects, and setting new limits on gravitational wave frequencies.

Findings

Achieved timing precision better than 1 microsecond.

Characterized white and red timing noise in pulsar data.

Set constraints on continuous gravitational wave sources.

Abstract

The Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy (IAR) is equipped with two single-dish 30-m radio antennas capable of performing daily observations of pulsars and radio transients in the southern hemisphere at 1.4 GHz. We aim to contribute to pulsar timing studies related to short time-scale interstellar scintillation and searches for sources of continuous gravitational waves. We performed high-cadence (almost daily) and long-duration observations of the bright millisecond pulsar J0437$-$4715 for over a year, gathering more than 700 hours of good-quality data with timing precision better than 1~$\mu$s. We characterize the white and red timing noise in IAR's observations of J0437$-$4715. We quantify the effects of scintillation in this data set and perform single pulsar searches of continuous gravitational waves, setting constraints in the nHz--$\mu$Hz frequency range. We demonstrate IAR's potential for performing pulsar monitoring in the 1.4 GHz radio band for long periods of time with a daily cadence. In particular, we conclude that the ongoing observational campaign of the millisecond pulsar J0437$-$4715 can contribute to increase the sensitivity of the existing pulsar timing arrays.