Development of a pulsar-based timescale
Abstract
Using observations of pulsars from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) project we develop the first pulsar-based timescale that has a precision comparable to the uncertainties in international atomic timescales. Our ensemble of pulsars provides an Ensemble Pulsar Scale (EPS) analogous to the free atomic timescale Echelle Atomique Libre (EAL). The EPS can be used to detect fluctuations in atomic timescales and therefore can lead to a new realisation of Terrestrial Time, TT(PPTA11). We successfully follow features known to affect the frequency of the International Atomic Timescale (TAI) and we find marginally significant differences between TT(PPTA11) and TT(BIPM11). We discuss the various phenomena that lead to a correlated signal in the pulsar timing residuals and therefore limit the stability of the pulsar timescale.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.3560,
title = {Development of a pulsar-based timescale},
author = {G. Hobbs and W. Coles and R. N. Manchester and M. J. Keith and R. M. Shannon and D. Chen and M. Bailes and N. D. R. Bhat and S. Burke-Spolaor and D. Champion and A. Chaudhary and A. Hotan and J. Khoo and J. Kocz and Y. Levin and S. Oslowski and B. Preisig and V. Ravi and J. E. Reynolds and J. Sarkissian and W. van Straten and J. P. W. Verbiest and D. Yardley and X. P. You},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.3560},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in MNRAS