• The evolution of the magnetic inclination angle as an explanation of the long term red timing-noise of pulsars

    分类: 物理学 >> 核物理学 提交时间: 2016-09-14

    摘要: We study the possibility that the long term red timing-noise in pulsars originates from the evolution of the magnetic inclination angle χ. The braking torque under consideration is a combination of the dipole radiation and the current loss. We find that the evolution of χ can give rise to extra cubic and fourth-order polynomial terms in the timing residuals. These two terms are determined by the efficiency of the dipole radiation, the relative electric-current density in the pulsar tube and χ. The following observation facts can be explained with this model: a) young pulsars have positive ν¨; b) old pulsars can have both positive and negative ν¨; c) the absolute values of ν¨ are proportional to −ν˙; d) the absolute values of the braking indices are proportional to the characteristic ages of pulsars. If the evolution of χ is purely due to rotation kinematics, then it can not explain the pulsars with braking index less than 3, and thus the intrinsic change of the magnetic field is needed in this case. Comparing the model with observations, we conclude that the drift direction of χ might oscillate many times during the lifetime of a pulsar. The evolution of χ is not sufficient to explain the rotation behavior of the Crab pulsar, because the observed χand χ˙ are inconsistent with the values indicated from the timing residuals using this model.

  • Detecting super-Nyquist-frequency gravitational waves using a pulsar timing array

    分类: 物理学 >> 核物理学 提交时间: 2016-09-02

    摘要: The maximum frequency of gravitational waves (GWs) detectable with traditional pulsar timing methods is set by the Nyquist frequency (fNy) of the observation. Beyond this frequency, GWs leave no temporal-correlated signals; instead, they appear as white noise in the timing residuals. The variance of the GW-induced white noise is a function of the position of the pulsars relative to the GW source. By observing this unique functional form in the timing data, we propose that we can detect GWs of frequency > fNy (super-Nyquist frequency GWs; SNFGWs). We demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method with simulated timing data. Using a selected dataset from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data release 1 and the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves publicly available datasets, we try to detect the signals from single SNFGW sources. The result is consistent with no GW detection with 65.5\% probability. An all-sky map of the sensitivity of the selected pulsar timing array to single SNFGW sources is generated, and the position of the GW source where the selected pulsar timing array is most sensitive to is λs=−0.82, βs=−1.03 (rad); the corresponding minimum GW strain is h=6.31×10−11 at f=1×10−5 Hz.