Secular variability, geodetic precession and moment of inertia of binary pulsars

2003/03/03 by B. P. Gong, Gong, B. P.
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Inertial Sensor and Navigation #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0303027

openalex publication_date 2003/03/03 · arxiv created 2003/06/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

More and more binary pulsars show significant secular variations, in which the measured projected semi-major axis, x^obs, and the first derivative of orbital period, P_b^obs, are several order of magnitude larger than the prediction of general relativity (GR). This paper shows that the geodetic precession induced orbital effects can explain both x and P_b measured in binary pulsars. Moreover, by this model we can automatically estimate the magnitude of the spin angular momenta of the pulsar and its companion star, and therefore the moment of inertia (10⁴⁴g cm² to 10⁴⁵g cm²) of pulsar of binary pulsar systems, which agrees well with theoretical predictions. In other words, the contamination (residual represented by x and P_b) in pulsar timing measurements might be caused by geodetic precession, an interesting gravitational effect we have been seeking for.

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