Stochastic processes for pulsar timing noise: fluctuations in the internal and external torques

Understand

Young pulsars deviate from a perfectly regular spin-down by two non-deterministic phenomena: impulsive glitches and timing noise.

• Both phenomena are interesting per se, and may provide insights into the superfluid properties of neutron stars, but they also act as a barrier to high-precision pulsar timing and gravitational wave experiments.
• We study a minimal stochastic model to describe the spin-down of a multicomponent neutron star, with fluctuations in both the internal and external torques.
• The power spectral density and timing noise strength of this kind of model can be obtained analytically, and compared with known results from pulsar timing observational campaigns.