Radio Astronomical Polarimetry and High-Precision Pulsar Timing

摘要

A new method of matrix template matching is presented in the context ofpulsar timing analysis. Pulse arrival times are typically measured using onlythe observed total intensity light curve. The new technique exploits theadditional timing information available in the polarization of the pulsarsignal by modeling the transformation between two polarized light curves in theFourier domain. For a number of millisecond pulsars, arrival time estimatesderived from polarimetric data are predicted to exhibit greater precision andaccuracy than those derived from the total intensity alone. Furthermore, thetransformation matrix produced during template matching may be used tocalibrate observations of other point sources. Unpublished supplementarymaterial is appended after the bibliography.