Tracking the long-term timing accuracy of the X-Ray Telescope on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory,Astronomy & Astrophysics

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Tracking the long-term timing accuracy of the X-Ray Telescope on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory
Astronomy & Astrophysics ( IF 5.4 ) Pub Date : 2024-12-16 , DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202450557
G. Cusumano, V. La Parola, M. Capalbi, M. Perri, E. Ambrosi, A. P. Beardmore, A. D’Aì, D. N. Burrows, S. Campana, P. A. Evans, J. A. Kennea, J. P. Osborne, B. Sbarufatti, G. Tagliaferri

Context. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has been operational since November 2004. Its X-ray Telescope (XRT), operating in the 0.3–10.0 keV range, is designed to provide detailed position, timing, and spectroscopic information.Aims. The calibration procedure for assessing the absolute timing accuracy of XRT was described in a previous paper. Here we update the past analysis using the complete data set of the Crab pulsar observations up to October 2022 and using a new version of the data-processing software package that includes corrections to several issues that could have affected the previous results.Methods. We evaluate the accuracy of the Crab pulse period determination using the folding technique and the pulse-phase analysis and compare our results with the values derived from radio observations. We also check the absolute time reconstruction, measuring the phase position of the main peak in the Crab profile and comparing it with the value reported in the literature, which is based on Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) observations.Results. We find that the accuracy in period determination for the Crab pulsar is of the order of a few picoseconds for the observations with the largest data time span. The absolute time reconstruction, measured using the position of the main pulse peak, shows that the main peak precedes the phase of the position reported in the literature for RXTE by ~263 µs on average. This corresponds to 0.982 in phase, with an observed dispersion of ±0.02 in phase values. We also find that observations very close in time (down to ~1 day separation) show a significant variation in absolute phase.

中文翻译：

跟踪 Neil Gehrels Swift 天文台上 X 射线望远镜的长期计时精度

上下文。尼尔·盖勒斯·斯威夫特天文台自 2004 年 11 月开始运营。其 X 射线望远镜（XRT）在 0.3–10.0 keV 范围内工作，旨在提供详细的位置、时间和光谱信息。目标。评估 XRT 绝对定时精度的校准程序在之前的论文中进行了描述。在这里，我们使用截至 2022 年 10 月的 Crab 脉冲星观测的完整数据集更新了过去的分析，并使用了新版本的数据处理软件包，其中包括对可能影响先前结果的几个问题的更正。方法。我们使用折叠技术和脉冲相位分析评估 Crab 脉冲周期测定的准确性，并将我们的结果与射电观测得出的值进行比较。我们还检查了绝对时间重构，测量了 Crab 剖面中主峰的相位位置，并将其与文献中报道的值进行比较，该值基于 Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer （RXTE）的观察。结果。我们发现，对于数据时间跨度最大的观测，Crab 脉冲星的周期确定精度大约为几皮秒。使用主脉冲峰值的位置测量的绝对时间重建表明，主峰值平均比文献中报道的 RXTE 位置相位早 ~263 μs。这相当于 0.982 的相位，观察到的相位色散值为 ±0.02。我们还发现，在时间上非常接近的观测值（低至 ~1 天的间隔）显示绝对相位存在显着变化。