Milky Way Accelerometry via Millisecond Pulsar Timing. (arXiv:2008.13052v2 [astro-ph.GA] UPDATED)
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Phillips_D/0/1/0/all/0/1">David F. Phillips</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Ravi_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Aakash Ravi</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Ebadi_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Reza Ebadi</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Walsworth_R/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ronald L. Walsworth</a>

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 1$sigma$ precision using 117 pulsars. We
also present results from a complementary analysis using orbital periods of 13
binary pulsar systems that eliminates systematics associated with pulsar
braking. 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.

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 1$sigma$ precision using 117 pulsars. We
also present results from a complementary analysis using orbital periods of 13
binary pulsar systems that eliminates systematics associated with pulsar
braking. 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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