On the detection probability of neutron star glitches

Abstract

Neutron stars are observed to undergo small, abrupt rotational speed-up. This phenomenon is known as glitch. In pulsar timing observations, detection of a neutron star glitch is constrained by the time of occurrence of the event relative to entire observing span and observing cadences, time of occurrence of preceding/subsequent glitches relative to observing cadences and the strength of timing noise. Using the Yu et al. (2013) data sets, in this paper, we analyse the observational selection in terms of detection probability. We define partial probabilities for the constraints and use Monte Carlo method with assuming glitches distribute uniformly to solve the complete probability formula for both group case involving 157 pulsars and individual cases for each of the seven pulsars with glitch numbers $⩾5$. In the simulations, numerical Bayesian inference is used for glitch identification. With the derived detection probability density and observed results, we uncover glitch size probability distribution embedded in the data for both the group and individual cases. We find the most prominent correction occurred for PSR~J1341$-$6220, in which exponent of the power-law model varies from the observed $+0.7_{-0.7}^{+1.4}$ to $-0.4_{-0.4}^{+1.0}$. We suggest observers determine the detection probability for glitch theories, e.g. the self-organised criticality.

Published in MNRAS https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/468/3/3031/3089739/On-the-detection-probability-of-neutron-star?guestAccessKey=6271d3e2-a890-4950-91e8-372e14b40a57 Your email for discussion is warmly welcome

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• Long-term statistics of pulsar glitches triggered by a Brownian stress accumulation process
• An updated glitch rate law inferred from radio pulsars
• A new small glitch in Vela discovered with a hidden Markov model
• Pulsar glitch activity as a state-dependent Poisson process: parameter estimation and epoch prediction
• Measuring the vortex-nucleus pinning force from pulsar glitch rates
• Effects of periodicity in observation scheduling on parameter estimation of pulsar glitches
• Long-term statistics of pulsar glitches due to history-dependent avalanches