comment
Few and far between
Pulsars — fast-spinning neutron stars — are precision clocks provided by nature. Finding pulsars in the Galactic
Centre orbiting Sagittarius A*, the closest supermassive black hole to the Earth, will offer unprecedented
opportunities to test general relativity and its alternatives.
Kuo Liu and Ralph Eatough
I
n the fifty years since their discovery,
pulsars have proven to be of tremendous
value for experiments in both astrophysics
and fundamental physics — from helping to
understand the properties of the interstellar
environment and the state of ultradense
nuclear matter, to developing cosmology and
testing gravity in the strong-field regime.
These exciting scientific achievements have
in return stimulated dozens of surveys for
previously unidentified pulsars. Among
these campaigns, finding pulsars at the
centre of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way,
would be the culmination of intensive search
efforts by pulsar astronomers that have
lasted for over two decades. The Galactic
Centre is of particular importance because
of the compelling evidence for the presence
of a supermassive black hole in this region; a
highly desirable companion for an orbiting
pulsar. Known to astronomers by the name
of its compact radio source counterpart,
Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short), the
hypothesis that it is a black hole is strongly
supported by near-infrared observations.
For the past two decades, monitoring of Sgr
A* has revealed the rapid motion
of massive stars in close orbits around
an object of tremendous mass
(approximately four million solar masses),
but with no observable counterpart at the
same wavelength1,2.
Over the past hundred years, black hole
physics has advanced enormously with
the establishment of the general theory
of relativity (GR) by Albert Einstein,
leading to a series of intriguing theorems
and predictions still to be verified by
experiments. At the centre of a black hole, a
singularity, where the curvature of spacetime
becomes infinite, is predicted to exist by
Einstein’s field equations under a “set of
rather general conditions”3. The cosmic
censorship conjecture (CCC) requires all
singularities to be hidden within the event
horizon and invisible to external observers4,
as in the occurrence of a naked singularity
GR loses its predictive power. The outer
spacetime in the vicinity of a stationary
black hole is fully described by the
Kerr–Newman metric. As a consequence,
812
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all stationary black holes in GR are
characterized by only three parameters —
mass, spin and electric charge — commonly
referred to as the no-hair theorem
(NHT). Given their essential roles in GR,
experiments that can test CCC or NHT
are of great importance and much sought
after. In particular, an invalidation of either
CCC or NHT would signal a breakdown in
GR and might hint at a way to bridge the
gap between classical and quantum gravity,
thus providing a path to new physics.
While the direct detection of gravitational
waves emitted by two merging black holes
shows the potential of the Advanced Laser
Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) for understanding
black hole properties5, tests of CCC and
NHT in the highly dynamical situation of a
merger event might remain challenging6.
Instead, finding a pulsar closely orbiting
Sgr A* might offer the solution. Pulsars are
typically extremely stable rotators; a crucial
feature for an accurate timekeeper. The
technique that utilizes this unique property
is called pulsar timing (Fig. 1). The basic
principle of pulsar timing is to measure the
arrival time of pulsations from the pulsar,
and to account for every single rotation over
time scales of years to decades. Through
such measurements the rotational period
of pulsars can in some cases be determined
with a precision better than 10–17 s. Other
effects that influence the pulse arrival time
on Earth, such as orbital motion around
another object, are also measurable with
exceptional precision7. Therefore, it is clear
that a pulsar in orbit around a black hole
simply meets all the desirable experimental
conditions — a precision ‘clock’ moving in
the strong gravitational field of a black hole.
This is particularly true when the black hole
is supermassive, as is the case for Sgr A* —
the gravitational potential in its vicinity is
several orders of magnitude larger than a
companion stellar-mass black hole (typically
5–30 solar masses) with the same separation.
By modelling the relativistic motion of a
pulsar orbiting Sgr A*, one can anticipate
measuring its properties — namely the
mass, spin and the mass quadrupole
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moment (effectively a measurement of
the oblateness of the mass distribution
of a gravitating body) — with a precision
of at least 1% and within a time scale of
approximately five years8. For standard Kerr
astrophysical black holes, the CCC and
NHT require the unitless spin of the black
hole, χ, to be no larger than unity, and the
unitless quadrupole moment of the black
hole, q, to be fully determined by its spin9:
q =​ −​χ2. Therefore, the measurement of
black hole properties from pulsar timing will
directly examine these most fundamental
predictions of GR.
Analogous to the ongoing stellar
monitoring campaigns, which have
just incorporated a new generation of
instruments, a pulsar timing experiment
will explore the spacetime in the vicinity
of Sgr A* in the far-field (~100–1,000
Schwarzschild radii; 10–5–10–4 pc). An
experiment, focusing on much smaller
scales, close to the event horizon (within less
than 10 Schwarzschild radii; 10–6 pc), will be
enabled by the Event Horizon Telescope10,
which is aiming to image the immediate
vicinity of the black hole (the so-called black
hole shadow) in the near future11. Being
independent but synergistic, the pulsar
experiment can provide valuable input for
this project — from the mass of the black
hole, the magnitude and direction of the
black hole spin and the distance from the
Earth to Sgr A* (ref. 12), to the interstellar
scattering properties along the line of sight
and the strength of the local magnetic field
in the Galactic Centre13. Such information is
of considerable value to the modelling and
subtraction of external general relativistic
magnetohydrodynamic effects during the
imaging process14. The case for the detection
of one or more pulsars closely orbiting Sgr
A* is therefore substantial.
Fortunately, the Galactic Centre appears
to offer an ideal environment for the
production of pulsars. For example, high-
mass stars — the progenitors of pulsars — are
widespread, and the abundant existence
of possible neutron stars, in the form of
X-ray binaries, has already been observed15.
Therefore, it seems logical to expect a large
 comment

i
Sgr A*

ii

iii
ii

iii

Radio telescope Reference clock Pulses arrive earlier

Fig. 1 | Tracking a pulsar as it orbits the central supermassive black hole. Changes in the location of a pulsar as it orbits another body can be inferred by
measurements of variation in the arrival time of pulses through the technique of pulsar timing — a process that allows every single rotation of the pulsar to
be counted and tracked. For a pulsar orbiting Sgr A*, as depicted here, timing observations reveal that pulses are arriving earlier through epochs i to iii, as
a consequence of the pulsar moving closer to the Earth in its orbit. As the pulsar moves to the other side of the orbit, pulses would correspondingly appear
delayed. The timing of a typical pulsar orbiting Sgr A* would be sensitive to changes in pulsar location of the order of tens of kilometres at a Galactic Centre
distance of approximately 8.3 kpc. Such precision allows deviations in the pulsar motion, caused by the effects of general relativity, to be measured with
unparalleled precision.

population of pulsars, and indeed stellar
population analyses have predicted up to an
order of one thousand pulsars in the central
parsec16. However, only six pulsars have
been found within a projected distance of
80 pc from Sgr A*, despite intensive search
efforts17. Uncertainty over the whereabouts
of the Galactic Centre pulsars has recently
been compounded by the detection in radio
of PSR J1745–2900, the pulsar that currently
lies closest to Sgr A* at a projected distance
of ~0.1 pc (ref. 13). Formerly, the lack of
numerous pulsar detections in this region
has been attributed to scattering of radio
waves in the dense and turbulent Galactic
Centre environment18. Scattering smears
out the pulses from pulsars, making them
undetectable. While PSR J1745–2900 itself
cannot be used for tests of GR — it is still too
distant (~105 Schwarzschild radii) from the
black hole — it acts as a unique probe of the
Galactic Centre environment. Measurements
have revealed that pulse scattering is far less
than predicted19. In addition, this pulsar is
believed to be a magnetar, which is one of the
rarest classes of pulsar13, suggesting it should
form part of a larger underlying population.
The unlikely combination of these two factors
has only enhanced a mystery surrounding the
whereabouts of Galactic Centre pulsars.
However, two connected aspects of this
conundrum should be noted. First, the
Galactic Centre is distant, at just over 8 kpc.
By using a free electron density model of
the Galaxy we can say that ~84% of known
pulsars are closer than the Galactic Centre.
Second, pulsars are typically very weak
radio sources and, because the intensity of
radio emission reduces with the square of
the distance, it is believed that the majority
of pulsars remain undetected. As such,
bigger, more sensitive radio telescopes, like
the planned Square Kilometre Array, might
be required to detect a typical pulsar at
the large distance of the Galactic Centre17.
While there is an interesting possibility that
Galactic Centre pulsars do not exist in large
numbers, we take the optimistic view that
previous radio pulsar surveys simply did
not have the sensitivity required to detect a
significant pulsar population. Consequently,
observations with the next generation
of radio telescopes will provide the best
opportunities for more pulsar discoveries in
the Galactic Centre.
Kuo Liu and Ralph Eatough
Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy,
Bonn, Germany.
e-mail: kliu@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de;
reatough@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
Published online: 1 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-017-0327-6
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❐
Acknowledgements
K.L. and R.E. acknowledge financial support by the
European Research Council for the ERC Synergy Grant
BlackHoleCam under contract no. 610058. Fig. 1 is based
on a sketch by R.E. The telescope outline is based on a
photograph by E. Middelberg.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.

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