A glitch in the millisecond pulsar J0900$-$3144
Abstract
We report the detection of a glitch in the millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR J09003144, which is included in the European, MeerKAT and Parkes pulsar timing array experiments. The dataset combines observations from the MeerKAT, Nan\c{c}ay, Lovell, and Murriyang telescopes, spanning a total baseline of approximately 14 years. The glitch occurred on MJD~59942(17), with a measured fractional spin frequency step of . This event represents the third glitch detected in a MSP, following those in PSRs B182124A and J06130200. Although smaller in amplitude than the previous two, the glitch in PSR J09003144 is of a comparable order of magnitude. The updated MSP glitch rate is glitches per pulsar per year, which suggests it is likely current PTAs will detect another MSP glitch within five years. Using simulations, we demonstrate that such small glitches can go undetected, especially in short datasets such as those from new PTAs, and can bias the inferred achromatic noise model parameters, potentially leading to the down-weighting of the pulsar in gravitational wave background searches.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.11336,
title = {A glitch in the millisecond pulsar J0900$-$3144},
author = {Bhavnesh Bhat and Michael J. Keith and Ismaël Cognard and Lucas Guillemot and Marcus E. Lower and Matthew T. Miles and Daniel J. Reardon and Golam Shaifullah and Ryan M. Shannon and Benjamin W. Stappers and Gilles Theureau and Shuangqiang Wang and Andrew Zic and Benjamin Shaw},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.11336},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Accepted for Publication in MNRAS