Periodic modulation in pulse arrival times from young pulsars: a renewed case for neutron star precession

Kerr, M.; Hobbs, G.; Johnston, S.; Shannon, R. M.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stv2457

Cited by 48 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Recently, Stairs et al (2019) reported correlated shape and spin-down changes in PSR J1830-1059, which they attributed to largescale magnetospheric switching. Brook et al (2016) analysed 168 pulsars and searched for correlations between profile shape changes and ν and found that although this correlation is clear in some pulsars, the intrinsic relationship between change in ν and profile variability may be much more complex than previously postulated (see also Kerr et al 2016).…”

Section: Quasi-periodic Modulationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Timing of young radio pulsars – I. Timing noise, periodic modulation, and proper motion

Parthasarathy

Shannon

Johnston

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The smooth spin-down of young pulsars is perturbed by two non-deterministic phenomenon, glitches and timing noise. Although the timing noise provides insights into nuclear and plasma physics at extreme densities, it acts as a barrier to high-precision pulsar timing experiments. An improved methodology based on Bayesian inference is developed to simultaneously model the stochastic and deterministic parameters for a sample of 85 high-E radio pulsars observed for ∼ 10 years with the 64-m Parkes radio telescope. Timing noise is known to be a red process and we develop a parametrization based on the red-noise amplitude (A red ) and spectral index (β). We measure the median A red to be −10.4 +1.8 −1.7 yr 3/2 and β to be −5.2 +3.0 −3.8 and show that the strength of timing noise scales proportionally to ν 1 | ν| −0.6±0.1 , where ν is the spin frequency of the pulsar and ν its spin-down rate. Finally, we measure significant braking indices for 19 pulsars, proper motions for two pulsars and discuss the presence of periodic modulation in the arrival times of five pulsars.

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Section: Quasi-periodic Modulationsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Timing of young radio pulsars – I. Timing noise, periodic modulation, and proper motion

Parthasarathy

Shannon

Johnston

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…Information about profile variability is interesting in its own right, and enhances the scientific return of pulsar timing experiments (e.g. Kramer et al 2006;Lyne et al 2010;Brook et al 2016;Kerr et al 2016;Johnston et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT – II. Observing strategy for pulsar monitoring with subarrays

Song

Weltevrede

Keith

et al. 2021

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The Thousand Pulsar Array (TPA) project currently monitors about 500 pulsars with the sensitive MeerKAT radio telescope by using subarrays to observe multiple sources simultaneously. Here we define the adopted observing strategy, which guarantees that each target is observed long enough to obtain a high fidelity pulse profile, thereby reaching a sufficient precision of a simple pulse shape parameter. This precision is estimated from the contribution of the system noise of the telescope, and the pulse-to-pulse variability of each pulsar, which we quantify under some simplifying assumptions. We test the assumptions and choice of model parameters using data from the MeerKAT 64-dish array, Lovell and Parkes telescopes. We demonstrate that the observing times derived from our method produce high fidelity pulse profiles that meet the needs of the TPA in studying pulse shape variability and pulsar timing. Our method can also be used to compare strategies for observing large numbers of pulsars with telescopes capable of forming multiple subarray configurations. We find that using two 32-dish MeerKAT subarrays is the most efficient strategy for the TPA project. We also find that the ability to observe in different array configurations will become increasingly important for large observing programmes using the Square Kilometre Array telescope.

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“…Assuming both sources are at the same distance (3.95 2.55 −2.05 kpc, taking into account the DM distance prior), the projected angular separation would be 222 +143 −116 AU. While the timing data for the pulsar do provide evidence for a periodic modulation (Kerr et al 2016;Parthasarathy et al 2019), this is unlikely to be caused by a massive binary companion.…”

Section: Notable Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 88%

Gaia pulsars and where to find them

Antoniadis

2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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While the majority of massive stars have a stellar companion, most pulsars appear to be isolated. Taken at face value, this suggests that most massive binaries break apart due to strong natal kicks received in supernova explosions. However, the observed binary fraction can still be subject to strong selection effects, as monitoring of newly-discovered pulsars is rarely carried out for long enough to conclusively rule out multiplicity. Here, we use the second Gaia Data Release (DR2) to search for companions to 1534 rotation-powered pulsars with positions known to better than 0${_{.}^{\prime\prime}}$5. We find 22 matches to known pulsars, including 1 not reported elsewhere, and 8 new possible companions to young pulsars. We examine the photometric and kinematic properties of these systems and provide empirical relations for identifying Gaia sources with potential millisecond pulsar companions. Our results confirm that the observed multiplicity fraction is small. However, we show that the number of binaries below the sensitivity of Gaia and radio timing in our sample could still be significantly higher. We constrain the binary fraction of young pulsars to be $f_{\rm young}^{\rm true}\le 5.3(8.3)\%$ under realistic(conservative) assumptions for the binary properties and current sensitivity thresholds. For massive stars (≥10 M⊙) in particular, we find $f_{\rm OB}^{\rm true}\le 3.7\%$ which sets a firm independent upper limit on the galactic neutron-star merger rate, ≤7.2 × 10−4 yr−1. Ongoing and future projects such as the CHIME/pulsar program, MeerTime, HIRAX and ultimately the SKA, will significantly improve these constraints in the future.

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Periodic modulation in pulse arrival times from young pulsars: a renewed case for neutron star precession

Cited by 48 publications

References 47 publications

Timing of young radio pulsars – I. Timing noise, periodic modulation, and proper motion

Timing of young radio pulsars – I. Timing noise, periodic modulation, and proper motion

The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT – II. Observing strategy for pulsar monitoring with subarrays

Gaia pulsars and where to find them

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