The propagation delay in the timing of a pulsar orbiting a supermassive black hole [CL]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02547


The observation of a pulsar closely orbiting the galactic center supermassive black hole would open the window for an accurate determination of the black hole parameters and for new tests of General Relativity. An important relativistic effect which has to be taken into account in the timing model is the propagation delay of the pulses in the gravitational field of the black hole. Due to the extreme mass ratio of the pulsar and the supermassive back hole we use the test particle limit to derive an exact analytical formula for the propagation delay in a Schwarzschild spacetime. We then compare this result to the propagation delays derived in the usually employed post-Newtonian approximation, in particular to the Shapiro delay up to the second post-Newtonian order. For edge-on orbits we also consider modifications of the Shapiro delay which take the lensing effects into account. Our results can be used to assess the accuracy of the different orders of the post-Newtonian approximation of the propagation delay.

Read this paper on arXiv…

E. Hackmann and A. Dhani
Fri, 8 Jun 18
26/51

Comments: 12 pages, 5 figures