1994/06/11 by Renu Malhotra, Malhotra, Renu
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Frequency and Time Standards #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9406033
To appear in "Millisecond Pulsars: A Decade of Surprises" (proceedings of Aspen Winter Astrophysics Conference, eds. A. Fruchter, M Tavani and D. Backer); 12 pages, uuencoded compressed postscript file; LPI-94/832
arxiv created 1994/06/11 · openalex publication_date 1994/06/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
About two years ago, Wolszczan and Frail announced the detection of a possible planetary system consisting of two Earth-mass planets around a millisecond pulsar. It was pointed out shortly thereafter that the mutual gravitational interaction of the planets leads to predictable evolution of their orbits. Because millisecond pulsars are very stable ``clocks'' and allow pulse timing measurements with microsecond precision, the orbit evolution would lead to a measurable modulation of the arrival times of the pulses. Detection of this effect would serve to corroborate the planetary interpretation of the data and provide additional constraints on the system. The theory of planetary perturbations in the context of pulsar timing observations is summarized here.