Abstract
Timing the arrival of pulsar light is a critical tool for scrutinizing the characteristics of the interstellar medium (ISM) and the pulsar itself. Pulsar timing is affected by factors such as the solar system's kinematics, turbulence in the ISM, and intrinsic timing noise inherent to each pulsar. The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) maintains a catalog of high-precision timing for millisecond pulsars. Using NANOGrav pulsars, and accounting for relative time-of-arrival (TOA) differences within observation epochs, the remaining noise in the TOA can be parsed out to just the jitter innate to the pulsar. This research utilizes wide band radio observations by the Very Large Array of NANOGrav pulsars to detail the characteristics of pulsar jitter, explore frequency dependence of apparent jitter measurements, and characterize other signal-dependent contributions to the timing white noise.
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Pulsars--Observations; Radio astronomy; Interstellar matter
Publication Date
12-14-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Student Type
Graduate
Degree Name
Physics (MS)
Department, Program, or Center
School of Physics and Astronomy (COS)
Advisor
Michael Lam
Advisor/Committee Member
Jeyhan Kartaltepe
Advisor/Committee Member
George Thurston
Recommended Citation
Hebel, Jackson, "Timing Jitter from Broadband Radio Observations of Millisecond Pulsars" (2022). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from
https://repository.rit.edu/theses/11390
Campus
RIT – Main Campus
Plan Codes
PHYS-MS
