High precision pulsar timing with the Nançay radiotelescope

Ismaël Cognard (1) , Gilles Theureau (1, 2) , G. Desvignes (3)

1 LPC2E - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace
2 USN - Unité Scientifique de la Station de Nançay
3 UC - University of California

The Nancay radiotelescope is involved in high precision timing since 20 years. Since 2004, a coherent dedispersion instrumentation enables numerous routine observations on more than 200 pulsars using half of the time of this 100-meters class radiotelescope. A set of highly stable millisecond pulsars is monitored as our contribution to the European Pulsar Timing Array in order to probe any kind of Gravitational Waves background. An encouraging first result was recently obtained (vanHaasteren, this proceedings).

Keywords: Neutron stars; Pulsars; Gravitational waves

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

Ismaël Cognard, Gilles Theureau, G. Desvignes. High precision pulsar timing with the Nançay radiotelescope. Conference on Radio Pulsars - An Astrophysical Key to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, Oct 2010, Chia, Italy. pp.142-143, ⟨10.1063/1.3615101⟩. ⟨insu-02779338⟩