What brakes the Crab pulsar?

Optical observations provide convincing evidence that the optical phase of the Crab pulsar follows the radio one closely. Since optical data do not depend on dispersion measure variations, they provide a robust and independent confirmation of the radio timing solution. The aim of this paper is to find a global mathematical description of Crab pulsar's phase as a function of time for the complete set of published Jodrell Bank radio ephemerides (JBE) in the period 1988-2014. We apply the mathematical techniques developed for analyzing optical observations to the analysis of JBE. We break the whole period into a series of episodes and express the phase of the pulsar in each episode as the sum of two analytical functions. The first function is the best-fitting local braking index law, and the second function represents small residuals from this law with an amplitude of only a few turns, which rapidly relaxes to the local braking index law. From our analysis, we demonstrate that the power law index undergoes "instantaneous" changes at the time of observed jumps in rotational frequency (glitches). We find that the phase evolution of the Crab pulsar is dominated by a series of constant braking law episodes, with the braking index changing abruptly after each episode in the range of values between 2.1 and 2.6. Deviations from such a regular phase description behave as oscillations triggered by glitches and amount to fewer than 40 turns during the above period, in which the pulsar has made more than 2.0e10 turns. Our analysis does not favor the explanation that glitches are connected to phenomena occurring in the interior of the pulsar. On the contrary, timing irregularities and changes in slow down rate seem to point to electromagnetic interaction of the pulsar with the surrounding environment.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Tensor product of motives via K\"unneth formula

Following Nori's original idea we here provide certain motivic categories with a canonical tensor structure. These motivic categories are associated to a cohomological functor on a suitable base category and the tensor structure is induced by the cartesian tensor structure on the base category via a cohomological K\"unneth formula.Comment: Revised version to appear on JPA

Optical phase coherent timing of the Crab nebula pulsar with Iqueye at the ESO New Technology Telescope

The Crab nebula pulsar was observed in 2009 January and December with a novel very fast optical photon counter, Iqueye, mounted at the ESO 3.5 m New Technology Telescope. Thanks to the exquisite quality of the Iqueye data, we computed accurate phase coherent timing solutions for the two observing runs and over the entire year 2009. Our statistical uncertainty on the determination of the phase of the main pulse and the rotational period of the pulsar for short (a few days) time intervals are $\approx 1 \, \mu$s and ~0.5 ps, respectively. Comparison with the Jodrell Bank radio ephemerides shows that the optical pulse leads the radio one by ~240 $\mu$s in January and ~160 $\mu$s in December, in agreement with a number of other measurements performed after 1996. A third-order polynomial fit adequately describes the spin-down for the 2009 January plus December optical observations. The phase noise is consistent with being Gaussian distributed with a dispersion $\sigma$ of $\approx 15 \, \mu$s in most observations, in agreement with theoretical expectations for photon noise-induced phase variability.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Diminishing "charginos nearly degenerate with the lightest neutralino" slit using precision data

Though LEP II direct searches still cannot exclude a chargino nearly degenerate with the lightest neutralino if their mass is only slightly above half of the Z boson mass, it can be excluded indirectly analyzing precision data. In this particular limit simple analytical formulas for oblique electroweak radiative corrections are presented.Comment: 6 pages, latex, 2 figures included; published on PLB. Bounds on chargino mass are improved; two references are adde

Logarithmic SUSY electroweak effects on four-fermion processes at TeV energies

We compute the MSSM one-loop contributions to the asymptotic energy behaviour of fermion-antifermion pair production at future lepton-antilepton colliders. Besides the conventional logarithms of Renormalization Group origin, extra SUSY linear logarithmic terms appear of "Sudakov-type". In the TeV range their overall effect on a variety of observables can be quite relevant and drastically different from that obtained in the SM case.Comment: 19 pages and 14 figures, corrected version. e-mail: [email protected]