An updated glitch rate law inferred from radio pulsars

Abstract

Radio pulsar glitches probe far-from-equilibrium processes involving stress accumulation and relaxation in neutron star interiors. Previous studies of glitch rates have focused on individual pulsars with as many recorded glitches as possible. In this work, we analyse glitch rates using all available data including objects that have glitched never or once. We assume the glitch rate follows a homogeneous Poisson process, and therefore exclude pulsars that exhibit quasiperiodic glitching behaviour. Calculating rele v ant Bayes factors shows that a model in which the glitch rate λscales as a power of the characteristic age τis preferred o v er models that depend arbitrarily on powers of the spin..