Observations of pulsar glitches

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Abstract
279 pulsars have been regularly monitored in a timing programme at Jodrell Bank, with the aim of providing ephemerides for X-ray and gamma-ray observations and for studying irregularities in their rotation. A total of 25 glitches have been detected in 10 pulsars during the course of the programme, which has monitored 2500 years of pulsar rotation. We present an analysis of these glitches together with their subsequent relaxations. The same analysis has been applied to seven glitches detected by other observing programmes in five other pulsars. Except in the youngest pulsars, the main effect of a glitch is a change in rotation rate, of which only a small fraction is recovered in the subsequent relaxation. In several pulsars, these relaxations are found to consist of a single exponential-like decay, with time-constant of order 100 d, together with a longer term recovery. Consequently, all glitches are analysed as a combination of step changes in the rotation rate and its first two derivatives, and transients that decay exponentially. The longer term relaxation in slow-down rate that is seen in many glitches can be interpreted as either a linear decay in frequency derivative or an exponential decay with time-constant ≲ 1000 d.

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