Frequency- and phase-resolved polarimetry of millisecond pulsars and its application to timing
Abstract
Pulsar timing is used for a variety of applications including tests of fundamental physics, probing the structure of neutron stars, and detecting nanohertz gravitational waves. Development of robust methods and generation of high-quality timing data is therefore of utmost importance. In this paper, we present a new technique for creating high-fidelity templates that can be used to measure the pulse times of arrival with significantly increased precision compared to existing methods. Our framework makes use of all available polarimetric information to generate frequency-dependent models of pulse-shape evolution of all four Stokes parameters. We apply this method to millisecond pulsars observed by the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array and show that it results in timing measurement uncertainties reduced up to 20-30%. We also present, for the first time, phase- and frequency-resolved polarimetric measurements of millisecond pulsars observed with the Parkes Murriyang ultra-widebandwith-low receiver. The data, plots and the code underlying this analysis are made publicly available.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.09220,
title = {Frequency- and phase-resolved polarimetry of millisecond pulsars and its application to timing},
author = {Małgorzata Curyło and Andrew Zic and Shuangqiang Wang and Eric Thrane and Paul D. Lasky and Jacob Cardinal Tremblay and Zu-Cheng Chen and Shi Dai and Valentina Di Marco and George Hobbs and Agastya Kapur and Wenhua Ling and Marcus E. Lower and Rami F. Mandow and Saurav Mishra and Daniel J. Reardon and Christopher J. Russell and Ryan M. Shannon and Xing-Jiang Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.09220},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
15 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, v2 (added missing coauthor), submitted for publication to MNRAS