A Putative Planet Orbiting the Pulsar PSR B0525+21

Abstract

Using the example of the pulsar B0525+21, a fundamentally new explanation has been proposed for the abrupt period changes observed in many pulsars, namely the presence of a companion orbiting the pulsar in a highly eccentric orbit. A model is presented describing the behavior of the barycentric timing residuals of B0525+21 in observations with the DSS 13 and DSS 14 radio telescopes of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Jodrell Bank Lovell radio telescope. The proposed model describes the motion of PSR B0525+21 in a binary system with a planetary secondary moving in an elliptical orbit with period P = 27.74 years, semi-major axis a = 10.35 AU, eccentricity e = 0.96, and mass m_c = 0.39M_⊕. The angular velocity of the pericenter motion \(\dot{\omega}=0.67\) rad/period has been measured; the presence of this motion provides evidence for a gas–dust disk or asteroid belt around the pulsar.