Glitches and glitching clusters in rotation-powered pulsars

TL;DR

This paper investigates pulsar glitches, revealing long-term clustering phenomena and relationships between glitch periods and pulsar age, providing new insights into neutron star physics without relying on specific physical models.

Contribution

It uncovers a long-term clustering pattern in pulsar glitches and establishes a linear relationship between glitch cluster period and pulsar age using a model-independent approach.

Findings

Identified long-term glitch clustering in 27 pulsars.

Found a linear correlation between glitch cluster period and pulsar age.

Observed Gaussian-like patterns in cluster size and interval distributions.

Abstract

The study of pulsar glitch phenomena serves as a valuable probe into the dynamic properties of matter under extreme high-density conditions, offering insights into the physics within neutron stars. Providing theoretical explanations for the diverse manifestations observed in different pulsars has proven to be a formidable challenge. By analyzing the distribution of glitch sizes and waiting times, along with the evolution of cumulative glitch sizes over time, we have uncovered a long-term clustering phenomenon for pulsar glitches. This perspective allows us to approach the distinct glitch representations in various pulsars from a unified standpoint, connecting the same periodicity of observational data to the randomness. Without relying on specific physical models, we utilized the coefficient of variation to numerically determine optimal clustering numbers and clustering periods for sample pulsars. Our analysis involving 27 pulsars has revealed a clear linear relationship between the glitch cluster period and characteristic age. Of interest, the cumulative distribution of functions of cluster sizes and interval times have the same patterns, which can be synchronously fitted by Gaussian processes. These results may indicate novel understandings of glitches and the resulting processes.