The pulse-shape variability and timing residuals of PSR B1937+21
Liu, Xiaojin
The stability of pulse profile shapes plays an important role in establishing pulsars as precise celestial clocks. In this talk, I will present our analysis of the profile shape of PSR B1937+21. We used Gaussian process regression to estimate the mean and uncertainty of the shape variations and applied the method to the data from the Lovell, Nancy and LEAP radio telescopes.  Although a few systematic shape variations were seen in some data sets, their significance was not high and no correlation was seen between the different variations. Shape variations are thus not likely to explain the unusual timing behavior of B1937+21. We placed an upper limit of the shape variations.