Pulsar Glitch Activity as a State-dependent Poisson Process: Parameter Estimation and Epoch Prediction

Melatos, A.; Drummond, L. V.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab44c3

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…This idea is formalized phenomenologically in the state-dependent Poisson (SDP) process popularized by . Precise, falsifiable predictions about size and waiting-time PDFs, auto-, and cross-correlations, as well as comparisons to current data sets, show the power and flexibility of the SDP model in the neutron star context Carlin & Melatos 2019a, 2019bMelatos & Drummond 2019). The same falsifiable predictions also deliver new physical insights when applied to solar flare data, as we show in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 59%

A Statistical Search for a Uniform Trigger Threshold in Solar Flares from Individual Active Regions

Carlin

Melatos

Wheatland

2023

ApJ

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Solar flares result from the sudden release of energy deposited by subphotospheric motions into the magnetic field of the corona. The deposited energy accumulates secularly between events. One may interpret the observed event statistics as resulting from a state-dependent Poisson process in which the instantaneous flare rate is a function of the stress in the system and a flare becomes certain as the stress approaches a threshold set by the microphysics of the flare trigger. If the system is driven fast, and if the threshold is static and uniform globally, a cross-correlation is predicted between the size of a flare and the forward waiting time to the next flare. This cross-correlation is broadly absent from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) soft X-ray flare database. One also predicts higher cross-correlations in active regions where the shapes of the waiting time and size distributions match. Again, there is no evidence for such an association in the GOES data. The data imply at least one of the following: (i) the threshold at which a flare is triggered varies in time; (ii) the rate at which energy is driven into active regions varies in time; (iii) historical flare catalogs are incomplete; or (iv) the description of solar flares as resulting from a buildup and release of energy, once a threshold is reached, is incomplete.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 59%

A Statistical Search for a Uniform Trigger Threshold in Solar Flares from Individual Active Regions

Carlin

Melatos

Wheatland

2023

ApJ

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“…Such a clear correlation does not seem to hold for any other pulsar and may be unique to PSR J0537−6910 (Melatos et al 2018). Fuentes et al (2019) find the large glitches of the Vela pulsar show a weak correlation, Akbal et al (2017) predict Vela glitch times to an accuracy of about ±0.4 yr, and Melatos & Drummond (2019) predict the next glitch for three other pulsars but with large uncertainties of ±0.7, 4, and 5 yr. Furthermore, statistical analyses give some indication that glitch sizes and times to next glitch each show a bimodal distribution in the case of PSR J0537−6910 (Howitt et al 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Return of the Big Glitcher: NICER timing and glitches of PSR J0537−6910

Espinoza

Arzoumanian

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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PSR J0537−6910, also known as the Big Glitcher, is the most prolific glitching pulsar known, and its spin-induced pulsations are only detectable in X-ray. We present results from analysis of 2.7 years of NICER timing observations, from 2017 August to 2020 April. We obtain a rotation phase-connected timing model for the entire timespan, which overlaps with the third observing run of LIGO/Virgo, thus enabling the most sensitive gravitational wave searches of this potentially strong gravitational wave-emitting pulsar. We find that the short-term braking index between glitches decreases towards a value of 7 or lower at longer times since the preceding glitch. By combining NICER and RXTE data, we measure a long-term braking index n = −1.25 ± 0.01. Our analysis reveals 8 new glitches, the first detected since 2011, near the end of RXTE, with a total NICER and RXTE glitch activity of 8.88 × 10−7yr−1. The new glitches follow the seemingly unique time-to-next-glitch—glitch-size correlation established previously using RXTE data, with a slope of 5dμHz−1. For one glitch around which NICER observes two days on either side, we search for but do not see clear evidence of spectral nor pulse profile changes that may be associated with the glitch.

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“…Table 9 in Warszawski & Melatos (2011) and Table 2 in Howitt et al (2020). The same is true in meta-models, where glitch activity is modeled as a state-dependent Poisson process without specializing to a particular version of the microphysics (Fulgenzi et al 2017;Carlin & Melatos 2019a;Melatos & Drummond 2019;Carlin & Melatos 2020).…”

Section: Physical Motivationmentioning

confidence: 96%

An updated glitch rate law inferred from radio pulsars

Millhouse,

Melatos,

Howitt

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Radio pulsar glitches probe far-from-equilibrium processes involving stress accumulation and relaxation in neutron star interiors. Previous studies of glitch rates have focused on individual pulsars with as many recorded glitches as possible. In this work we analyze glitch rates using all available data including objects that have glitched never or once. We assume the glitch rate follows a homogeneous Poisson process, and therefore exclude pulsars which exhibit quasiperiodic glitching behavior. Calculating relevant Bayes factors shows that a model in which the glitch rate 𝜆 scales as a power of the characteristic age 𝜏 is preferred over models which depend arbitrarily on powers of the spin frequency 𝜈 and/or its time derivative 𝜈. For 𝜆 = 𝐴(𝜏/𝜏 ref ) −𝛾 , where 𝜏 ref = 1 yr is a reference time, the posterior distributions are unimodal with 𝐴 = 0.0066 +0.003 −0.002 yr −1 , and 𝛾 = 0.27 +0.03 −0.03 . Importantly, the data exclude with 99% confidence the possibility 𝛾 = 1 canvassed in the literature. When objects with zero recorded glitches are included, the age-based rate law is still preferred and the posteriors change to give 𝐴 = 0.0099 +0.004 −0.003 yr −1 , and 𝛾 = 0.31 +0.03 −0.03 . The updated estimates still support increased glitch activity for younger pulsars, while demonstrating that the large number of objects with zero glitches contain important statistical information about the rate, provided that they are part of the same population as opposed to a disjoint population which never glitches for some unknown physical reason.

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Pulsar Glitch Activity as a State-dependent Poisson Process: Parameter Estimation and Epoch Prediction

Cited by 10 publications

References 54 publications

A Statistical Search for a Uniform Trigger Threshold in Solar Flares from Individual Active Regions

A Statistical Search for a Uniform Trigger Threshold in Solar Flares from Individual Active Regions

Return of the Big Glitcher: NICER timing and glitches of PSR J0537−6910

An updated glitch rate law inferred from radio pulsars

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