Improving Distances to Binary Millisecond Pulsars with Gaia

oleh: Abigail Moran, Chiara M. F. Mingarelli, Megan Bedell, Deborah Good, David N. Spergel

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: IOP Publishing 2023-01-01

Deskripsi

Pulsar distances are notoriously difficult to measure, and play an important role in many fundamental physics experiments, such as pulsar timing arrays. Here, we perform a cross-match between International PTA pulsars (IPTA) and Gaia's Data Release 2 (DR2) and Data Release 3 (DR3). We then combine the IPTA pulsar’s parallax with its binary companion’s parallax, found in Gaia, to improve the distance measurement to the binary. We find seven cross-matched IPTA pulsars in Gaia DR2, and when using Gaia DR3 we find six IPTA pulsar cross-matches but with seven Gaia objects. Moving from Gaia DR2 to Gaia DR3, we find that the Gaia parallaxes for the successfully cross-matched pulsars improved by 53%, and pulsar distances improved by 29%. Finally, we find that binary companions with a <3.0 σ detection are unreliable associations, setting a high bar for successful cross-matches.