Application of Millisecond Pulsar Timing to the Long-Term Stability of Clock Ensembles
First published: 1995
Brief summary
Describes the 1.6-millisecond pulsar B1937+21, whose rotational stability rivals atomic clocks, and its use for defining precise astronomical timescales over years.
Article
Application of Millisecond Pulsar Timing to the Long-Term Stability of Clock Ensembles is a preprint published by arXiv in 1995. It describes the 1.6-millisecond pulsar B1937+21, whose rotational stability rivals atomic clocks, and its use for defining precise astronomical timescales over years.
The analysis focuses on 1.6 milliseconds (pulsar spin). It also considers timing precision down to ~0.1 microsecond per daily measurement. The study compared directly against atomic time standards. This gives the cycle claim a specific numerical and evidential setting rather than presenting periodicity only as a visual impression.
The article reports the following result: The 1982 discovery of the 1.6 millisecond pulsar B1937+21 provided an object with rotational stability comparable to the best atomic time standards over periods exceeding a few years. The interpretation is strongest when it survives red-noise modelling, uneven sampling, spectral-window effects and correction for the number of frequencies searched.
For cycles researchers, the article brings together millisecond pulsars, pulsar timing, atomic clocks, astronomical timescales. It is relevant to the detection and interpretation of periodic signals in astronomical observations, where sampling, red noise and instrumental effects can imitate or obscure genuine cycles.
Because it is a preprint, the work should be read alongside later peer-reviewed publications and independent replications. It remains useful because the proposed cycle, dataset and analytical approach are stated clearly enough to be scrutinised.
Source details and credits
- Source / publisher: arXiv
- Source type: Preprint
- URL type: PDF
- Credits: arXiv
- URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9509133