2018/08/29 by M C Bezuidenhout, Bezuidenhout, M. C., C. Venter +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1808.09762
openalex publication_date 2018/08/29 · openalex created_date 2018/09/07 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Large Area Telescope aboard the Fermi spacecraft has detected more than 200 γ-ray pulsars since its launch in 2008. By concurrently fitting standard geometric model light curves onto Fermi and radio data, researchers have constrained the inclination and observer angles of a number of pulsars. At first this was done by comparing observed and modelled light curves by eye, and later via statistical approaches. We fit modelled light curves of 16 pulsars to radio and γ-ray data by optimising a custom test statistic that we have developed for combining light curves across the two wavebands, taking their disparate errors into account. We present geometrical constraints found using this process, and compare them with results found by eye or using other statistical methods.