Pulsar timing in the Galactic Center
Abstract
We propose a novel approach which implements the relativistic calculations of the photon travel time into a robust timing model for pulsars orbiting supermassive black holes. We demonstrate that timing models relying on the lowest-order (1PN) post-Newtonian approximation can produce significant discrepancies in strong-field configurations, affecting the predicted relativistic times of arrival at an Earth-based observatory. We also show how a misestimation of the pulsar parameters can lead to the appearance of phase-dependent residual, which hints at a tremendous constraining power of the binary and intrinsic parameters for timing observations of potential pulsars at the Galactic Center.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2501.03912,
title = {Pulsar timing in the Galactic Center},
author = {Riccardo Della Monica and Ivan de Martino},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.03912},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
19 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Matches version accepted in PRD