Determination of the orbital parameters of binary pulsars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, efficient method for determining binary pulsar orbital parameters from sparse observational data, utilizing Keplerian motion principles and linear least squares refinement.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach combining one-dimensional searches and linear fitting to accurately derive orbital parameters from limited pulsar data.

Findings

Successfully applied to highly eccentric pulsar PSR J0514-4002

Effective for nearly circular orbit pulsar 47 Tuc T

Method handles random, sparse sampling of orbits

Abstract

We present a simple method for determination of the orbital parameters of binary pulsars, using data on the pulsar period at multiple observing epochs. This method uses the circular nature of the velocity space orbit of Keplerian motion and produces preliminary values based on two one dimensional searches. Preliminary orbital parameter values are then refined using a computationally efficient linear least square fit. This method works for random and sparse sampling of the binary orbit. We demonstrate the technique on (a) the highly eccentric binary pulsar PSR J0514-4002 (the first known pulsar in the globular cluster NGC 1851) and (b) 47 Tuc T, a binary pulsar with a nearly circular orbit.