The irregular spin-down evolution of radio pulsars - Marcus Lower (CSIRO)

Conventionally, pulsars are thought to spin-down smoothly over time due to various radiative processes. However, long-term pulsar timing observations have revealed a more complex story. Many pulsars exhibit stochastic irregularities in their rotation over long timescales, often referred to as timing noise, as well as rotational glitches in the form of sudden spin-up events. There is also a growing sample of young pulsars that appear to be undergoing anomalously rapid spin-down evolution that cannot be explained by standard radiative mechanisms. In this talk, I will present the results of several recent and ongoing efforts to characterise the spin-down of a large sample of young pulsars that have been observed over several decades by Murriyang, the Parkes 64-m radio telescope. This includes robust braking torque measurements among several dozen pulsars, their relation to impulsive spin-up events and neutron star interior dynamics, and the apparent ubiquity of correlated spin-down/radio emission variations across the population.