Determination of the orbital parameters of binary pulsars

Abstract

We present a simple, novel method for determining the orbital parameters of binary pulsars. This method works with any sort of orbital sampling, no matter how sparse, provided that information on the period derivatives is available with each measurement of the rotational period of the pulsar, and it is applicable to binary systems with nearly circular orbits. We use the technique to estimate precisely the hitherto unknown orbital parameters of two binary millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae, 47 Tuc S and T. The method can also be used more generally to make first-order estimates of the orbital parameters of binary systems using a minimal number of data.