AI Article Synopsis
- Millisecond pulsars exhibit exceptional stability, similar to atomic clocks, which allows them to act as a network of accelerometers in the galaxy.
- Using data from 117 pulsars, researchers measured local galactic acceleration with high precision.
- The study also analyzed 13 binary pulsar systems to further refine these measurements, ultimately estimating the local acceleration and laying groundwork for understanding dark matter distribution in the Milky Way.
Article Abstract
The temporal stability of millisecond pulsars is remarkable, rivaling even some terrestrial atomic clocks at long timescales. Using this property, we show that millisecond pulsars distributed in the galactic neighborhood form an ensemble of accelerometers from which we can directly extract the local galactic acceleration. From pulsar spin period measurements, we demonstrate acceleration sensitivity with about 1σ precision using 117 pulsars. We also present a complementary analysis using orbital periods of 13 binary pulsar systems that eliminates the systematics associated with pulsar braking and results in a local acceleration of (1.7±0.5)×10^{-10} m/s^{2} in good agreement with expectations. This work is a first step toward dynamically measuring acceleration gradients that will eventually inform us about the dark matter density distribution in the Milky Way galaxy.
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