Pith sign in

REVIEW 1 cited by

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2411.08191 v1 pith:LPB2RXG4 submitted 2024-11-12 astro-ph.HE

The NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set: Probing Interstellar Turbulence and Precision Pulsar Timing with PSR J1903+0327

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords pulsarpulseradioscatteringshapetimetimingalong
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

Free electrons in the interstellar medium refract and diffract radio waves along multiple paths, resulting in angular and temporal broadening of radio pulses that limits pulsar timing precision. We determine multifrequency, multi-epoch scattering times for the large dispersion measure millisecond pulsar J1903+0327 by developing a three component model for the emitted pulse shape that is convolved with a best fit pulse broadening function (PBF) identified from a family of thin-screen and extended-media PBFs. We show that the scattering time, $\tau$, at a fiducial frequency of 1500 MHz changes by approximately 10% over a 5.5yr span with a characteristic timescale of approximately 100 days. We also constrain the spectral index and inner scale of the wavenumber spectrum of electron density variations along this line of sight. We find that the scaling law for $\tau$ vs. radio frequency is strongly affected by any mismatch between the true and assumed PBF or between the true and assumed intrinsic pulse shape. We show using simulations that refraction is a plausible cause of the epoch dependence of $\tau$, manifesting as changes in the PBF shape and $1/e$ time scale. Finally, we discuss the implications of our scattering results on pulsar timing including time of arrival delays and dispersion measure misestimation.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.

Forward citations

Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. NE2025: An Updated Electron Density Model for the Galactic Interstellar Medium

    astro-ph.GA 2026-02 conditional novelty 5.0

    NE2025 refits the thick disk, thin disk, and spiral arms of the NE2001 model and adds refined clumps, delivering 20 times better median pulsar distance accuracy and 100 percent better scattering predictions than NE2001.