Related papers: Pulsar Timing and its Application for Navigation a…
We discuss the possibility of an autonomous navigation system for spacecraft that is based on pulsar timing data. Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that are observable as variable celestial sources of electromagnetic radiation.…
An external reference system suitable for deep space navigation can be defined by fast spinning and strongly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars. Their beamed periodic signals have timing stabilities comparable to atomic clocks and…
Pulsars are remarkably precise "celestial clocks" that can be used to explore many different aspects of physics and astrophysics. In this article I give a brief summary of pulsar properties and describe some of the applications of pulsar…
Pulsars are the most stable macroscopic clocks found in nature. Spinning with periods as short as a few milliseconds, their stability can supersede that of the best atomic clocks on Earth over timescales of a few years. Stable clocks are…
The phenomenal rotational stability of millisecond pulsars allows them to be used as precise celestial clocks. An array of these pulsars can be exploited to search for correlated perturbations in their pulse times of arrival due to…
Pulsar timing, i.e. the analysis of the arrival times of pulses from a pulsar, is a powerful tool in modern astrophysics. It allows us to measure the time delays of an electromagnetic signal caused by a number of physical processes as the…
Gravitational waves are a radically new way to peer into the darkest depths of the cosmos. Pulsars can be used to make direct detections of gravitational waves through precision timing. When a gravitational wave passes between a pulsar and…
Pulsars are very stable clocks in space which have many applications to problems in physics and astrophysics. Observations of double-neutron-star binary systems have given the first observational evidence for the existence of gravitational…
Pulsar timing uses the highly stable pulsar spin period to investigate many astrophysical topics. In particular, pulsar timing arrays make use of a set of extremely well-timed pulsars and their time correlations as a challenging detector of…
A gravitational wave passing through a pulsar will lead to a variation in the moment of inertia of the pulsar affecting its rotation. This will affect the extremely accurately measured spin rate of the pulsar as well as its pulse profile…
Pulsars have at least two impressive applications. First, they can be used as highly accurate clocks, comparable in stability to atomic clocks; secondly, a small subset of pulsars, millisecond X-ray pulsars, provide all the necessary…
Pulsar timing now has a rich history in placing limits on the stochastic background of gravitational waves, and we plan soon to reach the sensitivity where we can detect, not just place limits on, the stochastic background. However, the…
Pulsar timing array projects are carrying out high precision observations of millisecond pulsars with the aim of detecting ultra-low frequency (~ 10^{-9} to 10^{-8} Hz) gravitational waves. We show how unambiguous detections of such waves…
The number of known millisecond pulsars has dramatically increased in the last few years. Regular observations of these pulsars may allow gravitational waves with frequencies ~10^-9 Hz to be detected. A ``pulsar timing array'' is therefore…
Pulsar timing is a technique that uses the highly stable spin periods of neutron stars to investigate a wide range of topics in physics and astrophysics. Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) use sets of extremely well-timed pulsars as a Galaxy-scale…
Usually, positions of spacecraft on interplanetary or deep space missions are determined by radar tracking from ground stations, a method by which uncertainty increases with distance from Earth. As an alternative, a spacecraft equipped with…
In order to show the principle viability of a recently proposed relativistic positioning method based on the use of pulsed signals from sources at infinity, we present an application example reconstructing the world-line of an idealized…
Gravitational waves provide a new probe of the Universe which can reveal a number of cosmological and astrophysical phenomena that cannot be observed by electromagnetic waves. Different frequencies of gravitational waves are detected by…
Radio pulsars are fascinating and extremely useful objects. Despite our on-going difficulties in understanding the details of their emission physics, they can be used as precise cosmic clocks in a wide-range of experiments -- in particular…
Pulsars are amongst the most stable rotators known in the Universe. Over many years some millisecond pulsars rival the stability of atomic clocks. Comparing observations of many such stable pulsars may allow the first direct detection of…