A measurement of the Galactic plane mass density from binary pulsar accelerations

Understand

We use compiled high-precision pulsar timing measurements to directly measure the Galactic acceleration of binary pulsars relative to the Solar System barycenter.

• Given the vertical accelerations, we use the Poisson equation to derive the Oort limit, i.e., the total volume mass density in the Galactic mid-plane.
• Our best-fitting model gives an Oort limit of $0.08^{0.05}_{-0.02} M_{\odot}/\rm pc^{3}$, which is close to estimates from recent Jeans analyses.
• Given the accounting of the baryon budget from McKee et al.