English

Pulsar timing in the Galactic Center

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-05-27 v2

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

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:58:55.938Z