Origin of pulsar timing noise: possible correlations between pulsar spin-down rates and magnetospheric processes

Pulsars are extremely accurate clocks that allow us to explore certain unanswered questions in the elds of exotic compact forms of matter and gravitational wave as- trophysics. Pulsars that form part of a timing array can be used to detect stochastic gravitational wave (GWs) backgrounds produced by merging super-massive black holes by searching for systematic correlated delays in the arrival times of the pulses over decades. However, these GW backgrounds produce a small amplitude variation in the timing residuals of a pulsar over decades. Similar to the residual signature produced by GW, timing noise also exhibits a quasi-periodic timing residual signa- ture due to some unidenti ed variations in the pulsar's spin parameters. This study focused on the analysis of the timing noise phenomena observed in PSR J1326-5859. Several decades of timing and polarization data were analyzed and correlated in an attempt to model the observed timing noise signature. We propose that PSR J1326-5859 is coupled to a fossil disk that torques the star in a quasi stable manner and produces the observed spin-down evolution and polarization state changes.