Principles and Applications of Pulsar Timing

4 Principles and Applications of Pulsar Timing

Pulsars are excellent celestial clocks. The period of the first pulsar [145 ] was found to be stable to one part in 10⁷ over a few months. Following the discovery of the millisecond pulsar B1937+21 [19 ] it was demonstrated that its period could be measured to one part in 10¹³ or better [97 ]. This unrivaled stability leads to a host of applications including uses as time keepers, probes of relativistic gravity and natural gravitational wave detectors.

4.1 Observing basics
4.2 The timing model
4.3 Timing stability
4.4 Timing binary pulsars
4.5 Testing general relativity
4.6 Pulsar timing and neutron star masses
4.7 Pulsar timing and gravitational wave detection
  4.7.1 Probing the gravitational wave background
  4.7.2 Constraints on massive black hole binaries
  4.7.3 A millisecond pulsar timing array
4.8 Going further