Long-term statistics of pulsar glitches triggered by a Brownian stress accumulation process

Abstract

ABSTRACT A microphysics-agnostic meta-model of rotational glitches in rotation-powered pulsars is developed, wherein the globally averaged internal stress accumulates as a Brownian process between glitches, and a glitch is triggered once a critical threshold is surmounted. Precise, falsifiable predictions are made regarding long-term event statistics in individual pulsars. For example, the Spearman cross-correlation coefficient between the size of a glitch and the waiting time until the next glitch should exceed 0.25 in all pulsars. Among the six pulsars with the most recorded glitches, PSR J0537−6910 and PSR J0835−4510 are consistent with the predictions of the meta-model, while PSR J1740−3015 and PSR J0631+1036 are not. PSR J0534+2200 and PSR J1341−6220 are only consistent with the meta-model, if there exists an undetected population of small glitches with small waiting times, which we do not resolve. The results are compared with a state-dependent Poisson process, another microphysics-agnostic meta-model in the literature. The results are also applied briefly to recent pulse-to-pulse observations of PSRJ0835−4510, which appear to reveal evidence for a negative fluctuation in rotation frequency just prior to the 2016 glitch.