A NEW ELECTRON-DENSITY MODEL FOR ESTIMATION OF PULSAR AND FRB DISTANCES

By J. M. Yao, R. Manchester, Na Wang. 2016

914 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new model for the distribution of free electrons in the Galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, and the intergalactic medium (IGM) that can be used to estimate distances to real or simulated pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs) based on their dispersion measure (DM). The Galactic model has an extended thick disk representing the so-called warm interstellar medium, a thin disk representing the Galactic molecular ring, spiral arms based on a recent fit to Galactic H ii regions, a Galactic Center disk, and seven local features including the Gum Nebula, Galactic Loop I, and the Local Bubble. An offset of the Sun from the Galactic plane and a warp of the outer Galactic disk are included in the model. Parameters of the Galactic model are determined by fitting to 189 pulsars with independently determined distances and DMs. Simple models are used for the Magellanic Clouds and the IGM. Galactic model distances are within the uncertainty range for 86 of the 189 independently determined distances and within 20% of the nearest limit for a further 38 pulsars. We estimate that 95% of predicted Galactic pulsar distances will have a relative error of less than a factor of 0.9. The predictions of YMW16 are compared to those of the TC93 and NE2001 models showing that YMW16 performs significantly better on all measures. Timescales for pulse broadening due to interstellar scattering are estimated for (real or simulated) Galactic and Magellanic Cloud pulsars and FRBs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3700817dd7072ee76762ea74b27ce08b989e71aa

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• A fast radio burst associated with a Galactic magnetar (2020, methodology): “According to two models for the Galactic distribution of free electrons, this DM corresponds to distances of 6–13 kpc [36] and 4–16 kpc [37].”
• The Detection of an Extremely Bright Fast Radio Burst in a Phased Array Feed Survey (2017, background): “The pulse dispersion measure, calculated by fitting the change in the pulse arrival time in the three equally spaced sub-bands below 1400 MHz, is 609.5± 0.5 pc cm−3, well in excess of the predicted contribution from our Galaxy (see Table 2, and Cordes & Lazio 2002; Yao et al. 2017).”
• A Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst in the Direction of M81 (2021, methodology): “…the 2020 February 6 burst; see Table 1). d Maximum DM model prediction along this line of sight for the NE2001 (Cordes & Lazio 2002) and YMW16 (Yao et al. 2017) Galactic electron density distribution models. eThe DM contribution of the Milky Way assuming that the ISM in the FRB sight line is…”
• The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS). Science Case and Survey Design (2019, neutral): “…for pulsar seaches with VLASS include: the improvement of electrondensity and magnetic field models for the Milky Way (e.g., Cordes & Lazio 2002; Yao et al. 2017; Van Eck et al. 2011; Jansson & Farrar 2012) by finding more pulsars in the Galactic Plane and Bulge, the discovery of compact binary…”
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision Timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars (2017, methodology): “For the electron-density models, we used both the NE2001 model (Cordes & Lazio 2002) and the YMW16 model (Yao et al. 2017).”
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, methodology): “Concerning the pulsar distance, in some cases the only available estimation comes from the DM distance, which is based on a model for the free electron density in our Galaxy (e.g. Cordes & Lazio 2002; Yao et al. 2016).”
• Probing Galactic Halos with Fast Radio Bursts (2019, methodology): “…from FORTAN to Python by Baror & Prochaska; https://github.com/FRBs/ne2001 3 There are additional models of the Galactic ISM (Gaensler et al. 2008; Yao et al. 2017) but we recommend the NE2001 model with the updates included in the Python distribution. tribution of the dark matter in collapsed…”
• The astrophysics of nanohertz gravitational waves (2018, background): “Many pulsar distances are poorly constrained, since most are estimated via the dispersion measure of the pulse (e. g., Cordes and Lazio 2002; Yao et al. 2017).”
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts – II. New FRB discoveries and their follow-up. (2017, methodology): “The model-dependent properties are derived using the YMW16 model (Yao et al. 2017) of the electron density in the Milky Way.”