Low Frequency Observations of the ISM and Pulsar Timing Joris Verbiest Xiaopeng You (Southwest University, China) William Coles (UCSD) George Hobbs (ATNF) PPTA team Swinburne University & ATNF, Australia
Outline Brief intro to PPTA DM variations and the turbulent ISM PSR J ’s DM Structure Function TOA-intensity correlation Summary
Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Sydney Dick Manchester, George Hobbs, David Champion, John Sarkissian, John Reynolds, Mike Kesteven, Warwick Wilson, Grant Hampson, Andrew Brown, David Smith, Jonathan Khoo, (Russell Edwards) Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne Matthew Bailes, Willem van Straten, Joris Verbiest, Ramesh Bhat, Sarah Burke, Andrew Jameson University of Texas, Brownsville Rick Jenet University of California, San Diego Bill Coles Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster PA Andrea Lommen University of Sydney, Sydney Daniel Yardley National Observatories of China, Beijing Johnny Wen Peking University, Beijing Kejia Lee Southwest University, Chongqing Xiaopeng You Curtin University, Perth Aidan Hotan PPTA Team Members
Pulsar Timing Arrays Main goal: Detect gravitational waves Secondary goals: Investigate time standards Investigate Solar System Investigate ISM …
DM Variations in Timing 50cm 20cm 10cm 20cm
PPTA DM Variations You et al., MNRAS, 2007
DM Structure Function Measure of turbulent power at different scales Expected to be exponential with spectral index α = 5/3 for Kolmogorov model
Typical SF You et al., MNRAS, 2007
Kolmogorov Slope (1000 days ≈ 7.8 AU) You et al., MNRAS, 2007
Large Inner Scale (10 days ≈ 0.4 AU) You et al., MNRAS, 2007
PSR J SF 1000 days ≈ 61 AU You et al., MNRAS, 2007
0437 DM Variations ~500 days ≈ 30 AU
Scintillation & TOAs PSR J MHz 2 hours, 8sec integrations TOA residual Signal-to-Noise -1
Scintillation/TOA - Simulations Coles et al., in preparation
Grad DM - Simulations Coles et al., in preparation
Correlation - Real Data Coles et al., in preparation
Conclusions PTAs need high timing precision. ISM effects need to be corrected Most easily measured at low frequencies ISM: an interesting place that keeps surprising…