Noisy Timing Behavior is a Feature of Central Compact Object Pulsars

Abstract We present a timing study of the three known central compact object (CCO) pulsars, isolated cooling neutron stars in supernova remnants, using observations from Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NICER spanning two decades. Relative to canonical young pulsars, CCOs are spinning down at a very slow rate ∣ f ̇ ∣ < 1 0 − 15 s −2 , implying a surface dipole magnetic field strength B s < 10 11 G that is too weak to account for their X-ray-emitting hot spots. Two CCO pulsars with sufficiently long monitoring, 1E 1207.4−5209 and PSR J0821−4300, are seen to deviate from steady spin-down; their timing residuals can be modeled by one or more glitches in f and f ̇ or alternatively by extreme timing noise. For the third CCO pulsar, PSR J1852+0040, the sparse temporal coverage was insufficient to detect such effects. Glitch activity and timing noise in large samples of rotation-powered pulsars correlate best with f ̇ , while the timing irregularities of the first two CCOs are extreme compared to pulsars of the same f ̇ . Nevertheless, timing activity in CCOs may arise from properties that they share with other young but more energetic pulsars: high internal temperature, strong buried magnetic field, and superfluid behavior. Alternatively, continuing low-level accretion of supernova debris is not ruled out as a source of timing noise in CCOs.