A Novel Technique for Long-term Timing of Redback Millisecond Pulsars

We present timing solutions spanning nearly two decades for five redback (RB) systems found in globular clusters (GCs), created using a novel technique that effectively “isolates” the pulsar. By accurately measuring the time of passage through periastron (T0) at points over the timing baseline, we use a piecewise-continuous binary model to get local solutions of the orbital variations that we pair with long-term orbital information to remove the orbital timing delays. The isolated pulse times of arrival can then be fit to describe the spin behavior of the millisecond pulsar (MSP). The results of our timing analyses via this method are consistent with those of conventional timing methods for binaries in GCs as demonstrated by analyses of NGC 6440D. We also investigate the observed orbital phase variations for these systems. Quasiperiodic oscillations in Terzan 5P’s orbit may be the result of changes to the gravitational quadruple moment of the companion as prescribed by the Applegate model. We find a striking correlation between the standard deviation of the phase variations as a fraction of a system’s orbit ( σΔT0 ) and the MSP’s spin frequency, as well as a potential correlation between σΔT0 and the binary’s projected semimajor axis. While long-term RB timing is fraught with large systematics, our work provides a needed alternative for studying systems with significant orbital variations, especially when high-cadence monitoring observations are unavailable.