The system consists of a pulsar of nominal period 59 ms in a
close binary orbit with an as yet unseen companion. The orbital
period is about 7.75 hours, and the eccentricity is 0.617. From
detailed analyses of the arrival times of pulses (which amounts
to an integrated version of the Doppler-shift methods used in
spectroscopic binary systems), extremely accurate orbital and
physical parameters for the system have been obtained
(Table
6). Because the orbit is so close () and because there is no evidence of an eclipse of the pulsar
signal or of mass transfer from the companion, it is generally
believed that the companion is compact: Evolutionary arguments
suggest that it is most likely a dead pulsar. Thus the orbital
motion is very clean, free from tidal or other complicating
effects. Furthermore, the data acquisition is ``clean'' in the
sense that by exploiting the intrinsic stability of the pulsar
clock combined with the ability to maintain and transfer atomic
time accurately using such devices as the Global Positioning
System, the observers can keep track of the pulsar phase with an
accuracy of 15
s, despite extended gaps between observing sessions (including a
several-year gap during the middle 1990s upgrade of the Arecibo
radio telescope). The pulsar has shown no evidence of
``glitches'' in its pulse period.
Table 6:
Parameters of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16. The numbers in
parentheses denote errors in the last digit. Data taken from an
online catalogue of pulsars maintained by Stephen Thorsett of the
University of California, Santa Cruz, see [128].
Three factors make this system an arena where relativistic
celestial mechanics must be used: the relatively large size of
relativistic effects [], a factor of 10 larger than the corresponding values for
solar-system orbits; the short orbital period, allowing secular
effects to build up rapidly; and the cleanliness of the system,
allowing accurate determinations of small effects. Because the
orbital separation is large compared to the neutron stars'
compact size, tidal effects can be ignored. Just as Newtonian
gravity is used as a tool for measuring astrophysical parameters
of ordinary binary systems, so GR is used as a tool for measuring
astrophysical parameters in the binary pulsar.
The observational parameters that are obtained from a
least-squares solution of the arrival-time data fall into three
groups: (i) non-orbital parameters, such as the pulsar period and
its rate of change (defined at a given epoch), and the position
of the pulsar on the sky; (ii) five ``Keplerian'' parameters,
most closely related to those appropriate for standard Newtonian
binary systems, such as the eccentricity
e
and the orbital period
; and (iii) five ``post-Keplerian'' parameters. The five
post-Keplerian parameters are:
, the average rate of periastron advance;
, the amplitude of delays in arrival of pulses caused by the
varying effects of the gravitational redshift and time dilation
as the pulsar moves in its elliptical orbit at varying distances
from the companion and with varying speeds;
, the rate of change of orbital period, caused predominantly by
gravitational radiation damping; and
r
and
, respectively the ``range'' and ``shape'' of the Shapiro time
delay of the pulsar signal as it propagates through the curved
spacetime region near the companion, where
i
is the angle of inclination of the orbit relative to the plane
of the sky.
In GR, these post-Keplerian parameters can be related to the
masses of the two bodies and to measured Keplerian parameters by
the equations (TEGP 12.1, 14.6 (a) [147])
where
and
denote the pulsar and companion masses, respectively. The
formula for
ignores possible non-relativistic contributions to the
periastron shift, such as tidally or rotationally induced effects
caused by the companion (for discussion of these effects, see
TEGP 12.1 (c) [147
]). The formula for
includes only quadrupole gravitational radiation; it ignores
other sources of energy loss, such as tidal dissipation (TEGP
12.1 (f) [147
]). Notice that, by virtue of Kepler's third law,
,
, thus the first two post-Keplerian parameters can be seen as
, or 1PN corrections to the underlying variable, while the third
is an
, or 2.5PN correction. The current observed values for the
Keplerian and post-Keplerian parameters are shown in Table
6
. The parameters
r
and
s
are not separately measurable with interesting accuracy for PSR
1913+16 because the orbit's
inclination does not lead to a substantial Shapiro delay.
Because
and
e
are separately measured parameters, the measurement of the three
post-Keplerian parameters provide three constraints on the two
unknown masses. The periastron shift measures the total mass of
the system,
measures the chirp mass, and
measures a complicated function of the masses. GR passes the
test if it provides a consistent solution to these constraints,
within the measurement errors.
From the intersection of the
and
constraints we obtain the values
and
. The third of Eqs. (60
) then predicts the value
. In order to compare the predicted value for
with the observed value of Table
6, it is necessary to take into account the small effect of a
relative acceleration between the binary pulsar system and the
solar system caused by the differential rotation of the galaxy.
This effect was previously considered unimportant when
was known only to 10 percent accuracy. Damour and Taylor [52] carried out a careful estimate of this effect using data on the
location and proper motion of the pulsar, combined with the best
information available on galactic rotation, and found
Subtracting this from the observed
(Table
6) gives the residual
which agrees with the prediction within the errors. In other words,
The consistency among the measurements is displayed in Figure 6, in which the regions allowed by the three most precise constraints have a single common overlap.
A third way to display the agreement with general relativity
is by comparing the observed phase of the orbit with a
theoretical template phase as a function of time. If
varies slowly in time, then to first order in a Taylor
expansion, the orbital phase is given by
. The time of periastron passage
is given by
, where
N
is an integer, and consequently, the periastron time will not
grow linearly with
N
. Thus the cumulative difference between periastron time
and
, the quantities actually measured in practice, should vary
according to
. Figure
7
shows the results: the dots are the data points, while the curve
is the predicted difference using the measured masses and the
quadrupole formula for
[137].
The consistency among the constraints provides a test of the assumption that the two bodies behave as ``point'' masses, without complicated tidal effects, obeying the general relativistic equations of motion including gravitational radiation. It is also a test of strong gravity, in that the highly relativistic internal structure of the neutron stars does not influence their orbital motion, as predicted by the strong equivalence principle of GR.
Recent observations [84, 138] indicate variations in the pulse profile, which suggests that the pulsar is undergoing precession as it moves through the curved spacetime generated by its companion, an effect known as geodetic precession. The amount is consistent with GR, assuming that the pulsar's spin is suitably misaligned with the orbital angular momentum. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that the pulsar beam may precess out of our line of sight by 2020.
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The Confrontation between General Relativity and
Experiment
Clifford M. Will http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2001-4 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de |