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Astronomers Detect Glitch in a Millisecond Pulsar
European astronomers have uncovered evidence of a small glitch in the spin of a millisecond pulsar. According to a research paper published on June 13 on arXiv.org, the pulsar, designated PSR J0613-0200, exhibits sudden changes in spin frequency, known as timing glitches. It is so far the smallest glitch size recorded and the second detection of a glitch in a millisecond pulsar to date.
Millisecond pulsars have highly stable rotation, thus they are used as extremely precise clocks in timing experiments, and the most stable are used as probes of space-time in pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments. PSR J0613-0200 in particular, is used in gravitational wave searches with pulsar timing arrays.
Recently, a team of European researchers, led by James McKee of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, U.K., detected the glitch in PSR J0613-0200, using data from four different telescopes across Europe. For their study, the astronomers employed the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank in the U.K., the Nançay Radio Telescope in France, the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany, and the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands.
According to the scientists, the small glitch was easy to detect with a data set covering a long baseline. They noted that during a detailed analysis of the available data, the effect of the glitch was easily removed without loss of timing precision and concluded that this anomaly does not affect the timing stability of this and other pulsars studied in PTA experiments.
"As the glitch is small and the red noise of the pulsar is not well-defined, it is therefore likely that potential unmodeled glitches outside the timing baseline for other PTA pulsars have no significant effect on timing array sensitivity," the researchers wrote.
The team is convinced that the observed anomaly in PSR J0613-0200 is, indeed, a glitch and rules out other possibilities, such as magnetospherically induced variations in rotation and pulse shape, or a gravitational wave burst with memory, caused by a merger of a supermassive black hole binary.
