Observational features of pulsar glitches

Pulsar glitches are sudden increases in the rotation rate which probably result from angular momentum transfer within the neutron star. We review the observational features of the 39 glitches detected at Nanshan from 2000 to 2008, including several events which appear to be slow glitches. A wide variety of post-glitch behavior is observed with very little recovery in some pulsars and over-recovery in others. Analysis of the whole sample of known glitches shows that fractional glitch amplitudes are correlated with characteristic age with a peak at about 105 years, but there is a spread of two or three orders of magnitude at all ages. For individual pulsars with many glitches, the time until the next glitch is sometimes proportional to the fractional glitch amplitude.