On the detectability of eccentric binary pulsars

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how orbital eccentricity affects the detectability of binary pulsars, providing formulas and software to quantify sensitivity loss and methods to recover it, especially for systems with massive companions.

Contribution

It generalizes previous work by deriving analytical expressions and software for sensitivity reduction in eccentric binary pulsar observations, including recovery techniques.

Findings

Sensitivity reduction can be significant for certain eccentricities and massive companions.

Acceleration and jerk search algorithms can recover lost sensitivity.

Highly eccentric orbits experience less sensitivity loss.

Abstract

By generalizing earlier work of Johnston & Kulkarni, we present a detailed description of the reduction in the signal-to-noise ratio for observations of binary pulsars. We present analytical expressions, and provide software, to calculate the sensitivity reduction for orbits of arbitrary eccentricity. We find that this reduction can be quite significant, especially in the case of a massive companion like another neutron star or a black hole. On the other hand, the reduction is less for highly eccentric orbits. We also demonstrate that this loss of sensitivity can be recovered by employing "acceleration search" or "acceleration-jerk search" algorithms.