The NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set: Dispersion Measure Mis-Estimation with Varying Bandwidths

TL;DR

This study quantifies how mis-estimations of dispersion measure in pulsar timing vary with bandwidth, revealing systematic offsets in TOAs that impact gravitational wave detection sensitivity.

Contribution

It introduces a method to assess dispersion mis-estimations across different bandwidths using broadband pulsar observations, enhancing noise modeling accuracy.

Findings

Systematic offset of ~22 microseconds in TOAs for high-DM pulsars.

Correlation timescale of dispersion mis-estimation is approximately one month.

Lower-DM pulsars exhibit smaller offsets (~7 microseconds).

Abstract

Noise characterization for pulsar-timing applications accounts for interstellar dispersion by assuming a known frequency-dependence of the delay it introduces in the times of arrival (TOAs). However, calculations of this delay suffer from mis-estimations due to other chromatic effects in the observations. The precision in modeling dispersion is dependent on the observed bandwidth. In this work, we calculate the offsets in infinite-frequency TOAs due to mis-estimations in the modeling of dispersion when using varying bandwidths at the Green Bank Telescope. We use a set of broadband observations of PSR J1643-1224, a pulsar with an excess of chromatic noise in its timing residuals. We artificially restricted these observations to a narrowband frequency range, then used both data sets to calculate residuals with a timing model that does not include short-scale dispersion variations. By fitting the resulting residuals to a dispersion model, and comparing the ensuing fitted parameters, we quantify the dispersion mis-estimations. Moreover, by calculating the autocovariance function of the parameters we obtained a characteristic timescale over which the dispersion mis-estimations are correlated. For PSR J1643-1224, which has one of the highest dispersion measures (DM) in the NANOGrav pulsar timing array, we find that the infinite-frequency TOAs suffer from a systematic offset of ~22 microseconds due to DM mis-estimations, with correlations over ~1 month. For lower-DM pulsars, the offset is ~7 microseconds. This error quantification can be used to provide more robust noise modeling in NANOGrav's data, thereby increasing sensitivity and improving parameter estimation in gravitational wave searches.