A bayesian method for pulsar template generation

Abstract

Extracting Times of Arrival (ToAs) from pulsar radio signals depends on the knowledge of the pulsar's pulse profile and themethod being used to compare such profiles.We contrast classical generation mechanism of averaging received intensity to generate these so-called templates with a newapproach based on Bayesian inference. Contrary to relying on purely integrated data, we explore the statistical properties of the receiver equation. The novel 'statistical templates' enrich the classically static information about the profile shape by assigning statistically reasonable uncertainties.We explore the benefit of this statistical information on both simulated and real measurement data from PSR B1133+16, PSR B0329+54 and PSR J1713+0747. After thoroughly analysing and testing the algorithm, we apply the novel approach to classical problems such as Nulling detection, Moding and ToA generation. We show that statements of classical analysis like 'pulsar showed nulling' or 'pulsar radiates in mode A' are enhanced with probabilities that can be used as weights in subsequent analysis. Implementing ToA generation, we find this algorithm to yield comparable timing errors to the classical method but giving a more accurate estimate of the remaining uncertainty in the ToAs. Consequently, we propose using such a method when being dominated by fluctuations, for example on bright observations, pulsars showing moding or observations with the increasing sensitivity of future telescopes like the square kilometre array.