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Bayesian model comparison and analysis of the Galactic disc population of gamma-ray millisecond pulsars

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Pulsed emission from almost one hundred millisecond pulsars (MSPs) has been detected in γ-rays by the Fermi Large-Area Telescope. The global properties of this population remain relatively unconstrained despite many… Click to show full abstract

Pulsed emission from almost one hundred millisecond pulsars (MSPs) has been detected in γ-rays by the Fermi Large-Area Telescope. The global properties of this population remain relatively unconstrained despite many attempts to model their spatial and luminosity distributions. We perform here a self-consistent Bayesian analysis of both the spatial distribution and luminosity function simultaneously. Distance uncertainties, arising from errors in the parallax measurement or Galactic electron-density model, are marginalized over. We provide a public python package (available from http://github.com/tedwards2412/MSPDist) for calculating distance uncertainties to pulsars derived using the dispersion measure by accounting for the uncertainties in Galactic electron-density model YMW16. Finally, we use multiple parametrizations for the MSP population and perform Bayesian model comparison, finding that a broken power-law luminosity function with Lorimer spatial profile are preferred over multiple other parametrizations used in the past. The best-fitting spatial distribution and number of γ-ray MSPs is consistent with results for the radio population of MSPs.

Keywords: bayesian model; model; model comparison; millisecond pulsars; population

Journal Title: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Year Published: 2018

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