Glitch sizes are heavy-tailed, but the exponent is not universal
Supplied working report; original verdicts not validated.
Review status: Needs review. This is an archival source note, not a passed proof.
notes.md
# Glitch sizes are heavy-tailed, but the exponent is not universal **Verdict: Partly supported.** 365 usable glitch sizes from the 736-glitch catalogue follow a power law above 1.6 parts per million with exponent 2.34 (KS 0.110, 77 in the tail). Per-pulsar exponents range 1.35 to 5.61, so the universality prediction fails. Waiting-time CV is 1.20, close to Poisson. ## Design Jodrell Bank glitch catalogue (736 glitches, 226 pulsars). Continuous power-law MLE with KS-selected lower cutoff; per-pulsar fits for the 8 pulsars with at least 10 glitches; waiting-time distribution checked against the exponential expectation. ## Result - Glitches: 365 - Pulsars: 125 - Power-law exponent: 2.34 - KS distance: 0.110 - Per-pulsar exponent range: 1.35-5.61 - Waiting-time CV: 1.20 ## Limits - The catalogue is heterogeneous: glitch detection thresholds differ between instruments and epochs, which truncates the small-size end. - Fractional frequency jumps mix glitches of different underlying sizes and some entries are upper limits or uncertain values. - The waiting-time test is crude: exposure is uneven, so a Poisson-like CV does not distinguish avalanche waiting times from a homogeneous Poisson process. - Only three pulsars carry at least 14 usable sizes, so the spread in exponents is estimated from three objects and is itself uncertain.