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Awarded in equal shares to Russell Alan Hulse and Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. for discovering a new type of pulsar that opened new possibilities for studying gravity.^[ref]

Coauthored the discovery report of pulsars, using an $81.5\mathrm{MHz}$ radio telescope for scintillation surveys. Repeated signals at a fixed sky position helped distinguish the source from terrestrial interference.^[ref]

The semimajor axis $a_1$ of the pulsar's orbit about the binary barycenter, projected along the line of sight and divided by the speed of light. The orbital inclination $i$ is zero for a face-on orbit. Thus $x$ is a time, often quoted as the numerical number of light-seconds in $a_1\sin i$, not the true binary separation. The relative-orbit semimajor axis is instead $a=a_1+a_2$; conservation of momentum gives $a_1=a{m}_2/(m_1+m_2)$.

Combining Kepler's third law with that barycenter relation gives the timing form of the binary mass function, also valid for eccentric Kepler orbits:Choose $x=2\mathrm{s}$ and $P_b=8\mathrm{h}$ for an original example: $a_1\sin i=599,585\mathrm{km}$ and $f\simeq 0.0773M_{\odot }$, where $M_{\odot }$ is a solar mass. For a specified pulsar mass $m_1=1.4M_{\odot }$, the smallest allowed companion mass occurs at $\sin i=1$ and is approximately $0.698M_{\odot }$. A different assumed $m_1$ changes this bound. One measured $f$ does not determine both masses and orbital inclination.

A pulsar is a rotating magnetized neutron star whose directed emission is observed as periodic pulses. Rotation supplies the energy of an ordinary radio pulsar.

A pulsar turns stellar rotation into an observable clock: the neutron star's emission can continue while its beam sweeps past the observer only briefly. The pulse spacing measures a repetition period; identifying that period with stellar rotation requires a physical model. The discovery of the first pulsar established a remarkably regular astronomical signal before its engine was understood. Today, pulsar dispersion delay also makes these clocks probes of the intervening interstellar medium.

Pulsar dedispersion aligns radio wave arrival times in separate frequency channels before combining them. For an original illustrative model chooseBoth bracketed ratios are dimensionless, so $D$ supplies all the time units. The reference is $150\mathrm{MHz}$: delays are $0$ there, $0.13333\mathrm{s}$ at $100\mathrm{MHz}$, and $0.26833\mathrm{s}$ at $80\mathrm{MHz}$. These are chosen model values, not measurements of the first pulsar. Subtracting the delay aligns the peaks; summing channels first spreads a short pulse over a longer interval and reduces its peak. Finite channel width and incorrect delay parameters leave residual smearing.

A pulsar magnetosphere is the plasma and electromagnetic field surrounding a pulsar. Close to the star, charges tend to screen electric fields parallel to the magnetic field and approximately corotate; near the light cylinder, relativistic motion and field distortion become essential.

Phase folding of a light curve collects samples at equal trial phase. Consider a noiseless illustrative pulsar with one pulse every $P=1.4\mathrm{s}$ and arrival times $t_n=nP$, after pulsar dedispersion. At $P_{\mathrm{trial}}=P$, all arrivals fold to one phase. But $P/2$ also puts all arrivals at one phase: folding discarded the fact that alternate proposed cycles contain no pulse. At $2P$, the arrivals instead occupy two phases, $0$ and $1/2$. Thus a sharp folded profile alone need not identify the fundamental period.

Check the original time sequence, adjacent arrival intervals and pulse occupancy as well as the folded profile. With $N$ arrivals and a slightly wrong trial period, the unwrapped drift isFor $N=100$ and $P_{\mathrm{trial}}=1.401\mathrm{s}$, this is about $-0.07066$ cycle. Splitting the observation into early and late pieces reveals the drift that one full folded average can blur. Separately, regular discrete sampling can create aliasing: observing at a spacing comparable with the pulse width can miss narrow pulses even when the recurrence period is much longer. Neither this toy exercise nor one sharp profile replaces time-standard calibration and propagation corrections.

Coauthored the discovery report of pulsars, using an $81.5\mathrm{MHz}$ radio telescope for scintillation surveys. Repeated signals at a fixed sky position helped distinguish the source from terrestrial interference.^[ref]

Russell Alan Hulse discovered a pulsar whose measured pulse period changed systematically during repeated observations. With Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., he interpreted the variations as orbital Doppler shifts in a compact binary star system.

The changing period was the clue rather than a defect in the clock. A regular intrinsic pulse train observed from an orbiting source provides a radial velocity curve and orbital timing information. The discovery created a laboratory for later tests of relativistic gravity, including the loss of orbital energy through gravitational radiation.^[ref][ref]