Limits on pulsar planetary systems from the Jodrell Bank timing database.
Abstract
A large pulsar timing database exists at Jodrell Bank which the authors have used to search for the signature of planetary systems around pulsars. Approximately 80% of the pulsars in this database cannot possess planets with mass greater than about ten times that of the Earth in orbits of period less than a few years. However, the limits on Earth-mass planets, and planets with long orbital periods are poor, partly due to the property of pulsars known as "timing noise", and partly because of the limited time-span of timing data on many pulsars. With more recent data, the authors verify the existence of a sinusoidal feature with a period of ≡1100 days in the pulse timing residuals of the pulsar PSR 0329+54 claimed in 1979 by Demianski and Proszynski. For almost all the data examined, there are no obvious signatures of planetary systems. A planetary system orbiting a pulsar would cause the residuals of the pulse arrival times to behave in an erratic manner which would resemble noise. One of the young pulsars (PSR 1828-11) contains an apparently large amount of timing noise, and has post-fit residuals that can be modelled quite successfully by two sinusoids, but only after the removal of a significant period second derivative.
- Publication:
-
Planets Around Pulsars
- Pub Date:
- January 1993
- Bibcode:
- 1993ASPC...36...19B
- Keywords:
-
- Extrasolar Planets;
- Planetary Systems;
- Pulsars;
- Planetary Mass;
- Stellar Orbits;
- Time Measurement;
- Astronomy