A comparative analysis of pulse time-of-arrival creation methods

TL;DR

This paper compares various methods for creating pulse times of arrival in pulsar timing, aiming to identify optimal practices and improve timing precision across different data sets and pulsars.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of TOA creation methods, including template generation, determination techniques, and bandwidth effects, offering guidance for optimization in pulsar timing.

Findings

Template profile comparison reveals differences in accuracy.

Three common template-matching methods evaluated for precision.

Timing precision varies with TOA bandwidth, showing potential optimization points.

Abstract

Extracting precise pulse times of arrival (TOAs) and their uncertainties is the first and most fundamental step in high-precision pulsar timing. In the classical method, TOAs are derived from total intensity pulse profiles of pulsars via cross-correlation with an idealised `1D' template of that profile. While a number of results have been presented in the literature relying on the ever increasing sensitivity of such pulsar timing experiments, there is no consensus on the most reliable methods for TOA creation and, more importantly, the associated TOA uncertainties for each scheme. In this article, we present a comprehensive comparison of TOA determination practices, focusing on the creation of timing templates, TOA determination methods and the most useful TOA bandwidth. The aim is both to present a possible approach towards TOA optimisation as well as the (partial) identification of an optimal TOA-creation scheme and the demonstration of optimisation differences between pulsars and data sets. We compare the values of data-derived template profiles as compared to analytic profiles and evaluate the three most commonly used template-matching methods. Finally, we study the relation between timing precision and TOA bandwidth to identify any potential breaks in that relationship. As a practical demonstration, we apply our selected methods to European Pulsar Timing Array data on the three test pulsars PSRs\ J0218+4232, J1713+0747 and J2145$-$0750.