Discovery of Delayed Spin-up Behavior Following Two Large Glitches in the Crab Pulsar, and the Statistics of Such Processes

Abstract

Abstract Glitches correspond to sudden jumps of rotation frequency (ν) and its derivative ( ) of pulsars, the origin of which remains not well understood yet, partly because the jump processes of most glitches are not well time-resolved. There are three large glitches of the Crab pulsar, detected in 1989, 1996, and 2017, which were found to have delayed spin-up processes before the normal recovery processes. Here we report two additional glitches of this pulsar that occurred in 2004 and 2011 for which we discovered delayed spin-up processes, and present refined parameters of the largest glitch, which occurred in 2017. The initial rising time of the glitch is determined as <0.48 hr. The two glitches that occurred in 2004 and 2011 had delayed spin-up time scales (τ 1) of 1.7 ± 0.8 days and 1.6 ± 0.4 days, respectively. We also carried out a statistical study of these five glitches with observed spin-up processes. We find that the Δν versus relation of these five glitches is similar to those with no detected delayed spin-up process, indicating that they are similar to the others in nature except that they have larger amplitudes. For these five glitches, the amplitudes of the delayed spin-up process ( ) and recovery process (Δν d2), their time scales (τ 1, τ 2), and permanent changes in spin frequency (Δν p) and total frequency step (Δν g) have positive correlations. From these correlations, we suggest that the delayed spin-up processes are common for all glitches, but are too short and thus difficult to be detected for most glitches.