2021/01/29 by Sofia Z. Sheikh, Mariah G. MacDonald · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Astrophysics #Biology #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Data mining #Fraction (chemistry) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Mathematics #Multivariate statistics #Null (SQL) #Physics #Population #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Randomness #Selection (genetic algorithm) #Statistical physics #Statistics #Univariate #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stab282
12 pages, 7 figures, accepted to MNRAS
arxiv created 2021/01/29 · openalex publication_date 2021/02/03 · arxiv updated 2021/02/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
ABSTRACT Approximately 8 per cent of the ∼2800 known pulsars exhibit ‘nulling,’ a temporary broad-band cessation of normal pulsar emission. Nulling behaviour can be coarsely quantified by the nulling fraction, which describes the percentage of time a given pulsar will be found in a null state. In this paper, we perform the most thorough statistical analysis thus far of the properties of 141 known nulling pulsars. We find weak, non-linear correlations between nulling fraction and pulse width, as well as nulling fraction and spin period which could be attributed to selection effects. We also further investigate a recently hypothesized gap at 40 per cent nulling fraction. While a local minimum does exist in the distribution, we cannot confirm a consistent and unique break in the distribution when we investigate with univariate and multivariate clustering methods, nor can we prove the existence of two statistically distinct populations about this minimum. Using the same methods, we find that nulling pulsars are a statistically different population from normal, radio, non-nulling pulsars, which has never been quantitatively verified. In addition, we summarize the findings of the prior nulling pulsar statistics literature, which are notoriously contradictory. This study, in context, furthers the idea that nulling fraction alone does not contain enough information to describe the behaviour of a nulling pulsar and that other parameters such as null lengths and null randomness, in addition to a better understanding of selection effects, are required to fully understand this phenomenon.