8th HEAD Meeting, 8-11 September, 2004
Session 8 Pulsars and Magnetars
Poster, Wednesday, September 8, 2004, 9:00am-10:00pm

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[8.14] The Curious Behavior of PSR J0537-6910

F.E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), E.V. Gotthelf (Columbia U.), J. Middleditch (LANL), Q.D. Wang (U. of Mass.), W. Zhang (NASA/GSFC)

We report results from an extensive timing monitoring campaign of PSR J0537-6910, the 16-ms pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud, The source has been monitored using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer since January, 1999, and at least 18 glitches in its rotation rate have been seen. Despite this extreme activity, phase-connected timing solutions are maintained between the glitches. In addition to its high rotation rate and frequent large glitches, the pulsar has other unusual characteristics. First, a precursor is sometimes seen before the large glitches in which a large phase error is detected several days before the glitch. with no measurable change in pulsar frequency. Second, the size of a glitch is correlated with the time since the previous glitch. Third, phases measured during observations for several weeks after a glitch are often slightly below the extrapolation of best-fit model for the subsequent post-glitch data. It appears that a small fraction of the sudden increase in frequency decays with an e-folding time scale of about a week. We discuss the implications of these phenomena.


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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.