Frequency-Dependent Template Profiles for High Precision Pulsar Timing

Abstract

Pulsar timing experiments require high fidelity template profiles in order to minimize the biases in pulse time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements and their uncertainties. Efforts to acquire more precise TOAs given fixed effective area of telescopes, finite receiver noise, and limited integration time have led pulsar astronomers to the solution of implementing ultra-wideband receivers. This solution, however, has run up against the problem that pulse profile shapes evolve with frequency, which raises the question of how to properly measure and analyze TOAs obtained using template-matching methods. This paper proposes a new method for one facet of this problem, that of template profile generation, and demonstrates it on the well-timed millisecond pulsar J1713+0747. Specifically, we decompose pulse profile evolution into a linear combination of basis eigenvectors, the coefficients of which change slowly with frequency such that their evolution is modeled simply by a sum of low degree piecewise polynomial spline functions. These noise-free, high fidelity, frequency-dependent templates can be used to make measurements of so-called "wideband TOAs" simultaneously with an estimate of the instantaneous dispersion measure. The use of wideband TOAs is becoming important for pulsar timing array experiments, as the volume of datasets comprised of conventional, subbanded TOAs are quickly becoming unwieldly for the Bayesian analyses needed to uncover latent gravitational wave signals. Although motivated by high precision timing experiments, our technique is applicable in more general pulsar observations.

16 pages, 6 figures, accepted to ApJ

References in corpus (27)

• Tests of general relativity from timing the double pulsar
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars
• Assessing the Role of Spin Noise in the Precision Timing of Millisecond Pulsars
• A Study of Multi-frequency Polarization Pulse Profiles of Millisecond Pulsars
• NANOGrav Limits on Gravitational Waves from Individual Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Circular Orbits
• Limitations in timing precision due to single-pulse shape variability in millisecond pulsars
• New advances in the Gaussian-process approach to pulsar-timing data analysis
• Time-domain Implementation of the Optimal Cross-Correlation Statistic for Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background Searches in Pulsar Timing Data
• Scattering analysis of LOFAR pulsar observations
• Measuring pulse times of arrival from broadband pulsar observations
• A Second Chromatic Timing Event of Interstellar Origin toward PSR J1713+0747
• The analysis of the largest sample of multi-frequency pulsar scatter time estimates
• The disturbance of a millisecond pulsar magnetosphere
• Low-rank approximations for large stationary covariance matrices, as used in the Bayesian and generalized-least-squares analysis of pulsar-timing data
• Model-based asymptotically optimal dispersion measure correction for pulsar timing
• Frequency dependence of pulse width for 150 radio normal pulsars
• Pulsar Timing Errors from Asynchronous Multi-Frequency Sampling of Dispersion Measure Variations
• Optimal Frequency Ranges for Sub-Microsecond Precision Pulsar Timing
• The NANOGrav 11-Year Data Set: Arecibo Observatory Polarimetry And Pulse Microcomponents
• MeerTime - the MeerKAT Key Science Program on Pulsar Timing
• Wide-band Profile Domain Pulsar Timing Analysis
• Optimizing Pulsar Timing Arrays Observations for Detection and Characterization of Low-Frequency Gravitational Wave Sources
• Supermassive Black Hole Binary Environments: Effects on the Scaling Laws and Time to Detection for the Stochastic Background
• Pulsar timing and its applications
• A Bayesian method for pulsar template generation
• Improving Pulsar Timing Precision with Single Pulses

Cited by in corpus (46)

• Refined Mass and Geometric Measurements of the High-Mass PSR J0740+6620
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars
• Strong-field Gravity Tests with the Double Pulsar
• An ultra-wide bandwidth (704 to 4032 MHz) receiver for the Parkes radio telescope
• PINT: A Modern Software Package for Pulsar Timing
• The MeerKAT Telescope as a Pulsar Facility: System verification and early science results from MeerTime
• The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Observations and Narrowband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• The NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set: Detector Characterization and Noise Budget
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Wideband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• The Indian Pulsar Timing Array: First data release
• The MeerTime Pulsar Timing Array -- A Census of Emission Properties and Timing Potential
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT I: Science objectives and first results
• Measurements of pulse jitter and single-pulse variability in millisecond pulsars using MeerKAT
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: The $4.5$-year data release and the noise and stochastic signals of the millisecond pulsar population
• The NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set: The Frequency Dependence of Pulse Jitter in Precision Millisecond Pulsars
• Detection of ultra-fast radio bursts from FRB 20121102A
• On the usefulness of existing Solar-wind models for pulsar timing corrections
• Two years of pulsar observations with the Ultra-Wideband Receiver on the Parkes radio telescope
• First discovery of new pulsars and RRATs with CHIME/FRB
• Measuring Interstellar Delays of PSR J0613-0200 over 7 years, using the Large European Array for Pulsars
• A polarization census of bright pulsars using the Ultra-Wideband Receiver on the Parkes radio telescope
• Dual-frequency single-pulse study of PSR B0950+08
• Searches for Shapiro delay in seven binary pulsars using the MeerKAT telescope
• Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Astronomy during the SKA Era: An InPTA perspective
• pinta: The uGMRT Data Processing Pipeline for the Indian Pulsar Timing Array
• The MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array: Maps of the gravitational-wave sky with the 4.5 year data release
• Low-frequency wideband timing of InPTA pulsars observed with the uGMRT
• Wideband timing of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array UWL data
• Noise analysis of the Indian Pulsar Timing Array data release I
• CHIME Discovery of a Binary Pulsar with a Massive Non-Degenerate Companion
• Understanding the radio beam of PSR J1136+1551 through its singlepulses
• Pulsar polarimetry with the Parkes Ultra-Wideband receiver
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XVIII. The reprocessing of the HTRU-S Low Lat survey around the Galactic centre using a Fast Folding Algorithm pipeline for accelerated pulsars
• Post-Newtonian-accurate pulsar timing array signals induced by inspiralling eccentric binaries: accuracy, computational cost, and single-pulsar search
• A high time resolution study of the millisecond pulsar J2241-5236 at frequencies below 300 MHz
• Detection of frequency-dependent dispersion measure toward the millisecond pulsar PSR J2241-5236 from contemporaneous wide-band observations
• The NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set: Probing Interstellar Turbulence and Precision Pulsar Timing with PSR J1903+0327
• Topology of Pulsar Profiles (ToPP). I. Graph theory method and classification of the EPN
• The imprint of dark matter on the Galactic acceleration field
• The SPAN512 mid-latitude pulsar survey at the Nançay Radio Telescope
• Improving pulsar-timing solutions through dynamic pulse fitting
• Multi-band Extension of the Wideband Timing Technique
• Bayesian pulsar timing and noise analysis with Vela.jl: an overview
• Wide-band timing of GMRT discovered millisecond pulsars
• Revisiting wideband pulsar timing measurements