Normal Distribution of Crab Pulsar Glitch Activity from a Glitch Cluster Perspective

TL;DR

This study analyzes Crab pulsar glitches using a clustering approach, revealing a normal distribution of waiting times and enabling predictions of future glitches, challenging traditional power-law models.

Contribution

It introduces a glitch-clustering perspective that links glitch size and waiting time, providing a new statistical framework for understanding pulsar glitch behavior.

Findings

Waiting times follow a normal distribution.

Correlation between glitch size and waiting time.

Next glitch predicted within approximately 387 days.

Abstract

As the most extensively and continuously monitored neutron star, the Crab pulsar serves as representative of the earliest evolutionary stage. Its unique and complex glitch phenomenology provides an unparalleled testing ground for theoretical models of neutron star interior dynamics. Within the self-organized criticality paradigm, Crab pulsar glitch sizes are modeled by a power-law distribution and waiting times by an exponential distribution. However, this framework is incompatible with neutron-star microphysics and fails to account for the quasi-periodic glitch behavior. Using a glitch-clustering perspective, which is motivated by the hypothesis that each event releases only a fraction of the stored angular momentum, we merged small glitches occurring within short temporal separations. We reveal a correlation between glitch size and waiting time and uncover that the waiting-time cumulative distribution function follows a normal distribution. Crucially, without recourse to complex statistical models, this approach permits a reasonable forecast of the next glitch. From the perspective of the dense-glitch region, the Crab pulsar currently falls within the $3\sigma$-$4\sigma$ probability interval. For the existence of a long-term periodicity of 6.68 years, the $\pm1\sigma$ interval defines a time window extending from the present to approximately 387 days ahead, this implies the next glith would emerge at any time before MJD 61081 (February 2026).