Proper motions of 15 pulsars: a comparison between Bayesian and frequentist algorithms

TL;DR

This study compares Bayesian and frequentist algorithms for measuring pulsar proper motions, demonstrating their consistency and applying them to data with significant timing noise, resulting in new and improved measurements.

Contribution

It provides a direct comparison of Bayesian and frequentist methods for pulsar proper motion estimation using real observational data.

Findings

Both methods yield consistent proper motion results.

Proper motions for four pulsars are measured for the first time.

Improved proper motion values are obtained for five pulsars.

Abstract

We present proper motions for 15 pulsars which are observed regularly by the Nanshan 25-m radio telescope. Two methods, the frequentist method (Coles et al.2011) and the Bayesian (Lentati et al. 2014) method, are used and the results are compared. We demonstrate that the two methods can be applied to young pulsar data sets that exhibit large amounts of timing noise with steep spectral exponents and give consistent results. The measured positions also agree with very-long-baseline interferometric positions. Proper motions for four pulsars are obtained for the first time, and improved values are obtained for five pulsars.