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Predicting the Starquakes in PSR J0537–6910
The Astrophysical Journal
  • J Middleditch
  • FE Marshall
  • QD Wang, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • EV Gotthelf
  • W Zhang
Publication Date
2006
Abstract

We report on more than 7 yr of monitoring of PSR J0537-6910, the 16 ms pulsar in the LMC, using data acquired with RXTE. During this campaign the pulsar experienced 23 sudden increases in frequency ("glitches") amounting to a total gain of over 6 ppm of rotation frequency superposed on its gradual spin-down of = -2 × 10-10 Hz s-1. The time interval from one glitch to the next obeys a strong linear correlation to the amplitude of the first glitch, with a mean slope of about 400 days ppm-1 (6.5 days μHz-1), such that these intervals can be predicted to within a few days, an accuracy that has never before been seen in any other pulsar. There appears to be an upper limit of ~40 μHz for the size of glitches in all pulsars, with the 1999 April glitch of PSR J0537-6910 the largest so far. The change of its spin-down across the glitches, Δ, appears to have the same hard lower limit, -1.5 × 10-13 Hz s-1, as that observed in all other pulsars. The spin-down continues to increase in the long term, = -10-21 Hz s-2, and thus the timing age of PSR J0537-6910 (-0.5ν-1) continues to decrease at a rate of nearly 1 yr every year, consistent with movement of its magnetic moment away from its rotational axis by 1 rad every 10,000 yr, or about 1 m yr-1. PSR J0537-6910 was likely to have been born as a nearly aligned rotator spinning at 75-80 Hz, with a || considerably smaller than its current value of 2 × 10-10 Hz s-1. Its pulse profile consists of a single pulse that is found to be flat at its peak for at least 0.02 cycles.

Comments

This is the pre-published version harvested from ArXiv. The published version is located at http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/652/2/1531/

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/508736
Pages
1531
Citation Information
J Middleditch, FE Marshall, QD Wang, EV Gotthelf, et al.. "Predicting the Starquakes in PSR J0537–6910" The Astrophysical Journal Vol. 652 Iss. 2 (2006)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/daniel_wang/39/