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Register a new userThe Discovery of the Most Accelerated Binary Pulsar
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Pulsars in relativistic binary systems have emerged as fantastic natural laboratories for testing theories of gravity, the most prominent example being the double pulsar, PSR J0737$-$3039. The HTRU-South Low Latitude pulsar survey represents one of the most sensitive blind pulsar surveys taken of the southern Galactic plane to date, and its primary aim has been the discovery of new relativistic binary pulsars. Here we present our binary pulsar searching strategy and report on the surveys flagship discovery, PSR J1757$-$1854. A 21.5-ms pulsar in a relativistic binary with an orbital period of 4.4 hours and an eccentricity of 0.61, this double neutron star (DNS) system is the most accelerated pulsar binary known, and probes a relativistic parameter space not yet explored by previous pulsar binaries.
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We report the discovery of PSR J1757$-$1854, a 21.5-ms pulsar in a highly-eccentric, 4.4-h orbit around a neutron star (NS) companion. PSR J1757$-$1854 exhibits some of the most extreme relativistic parameters of any known pulsar, including the strongest relativistic effects due to gravitational-wave (GW) damping, with a merger time of 76 Myr. Following a 1.6-yr timing campaign, we have measured five post-Keplerian (PK) parameters, yielding the two component masses ($m_text{p}=1.3384(9),text{M}_odot$ and $m_text{c}=1.3946(9),text{M}_odot$) plus three tests of general relativity (GR), which the theory passes. The larger mass of the NS companion provides important clues regarding the binary formation of PSR J1757$-$1854. With simulations suggesting 3-$sigma$ measurements of both the contribution of Lense-Thirring precession to the rate of change of the semi-major axis and the relativistic deformation of the orbit within $sim7-9$ years, PSR J1757$-$1854 stands out as a unique laboratory for new tests of gravitational theories.
Millisecond pulsars, old neutron stars spun-up by accreting matter from a companion star, can reach high rotation rates of hundreds of revolutions per second. Until now, all such recycled rotation-powered pulsars have been detected by their spin-modulated radio emission. In a computing-intensive blind search of gamma-ray data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (with partial constraints from optical data), we detected a 2.5-millisecond pulsar, PSR J1311-3430. This unambiguously explains a formerly unidentified gamma-ray source that had been a decade-long enigma, confirming previous conjectures. The pulsar is in a circular orbit with an orbital period of only 93 minutes, the shortest of any spin-powered pulsar binary ever found.
We report the discovery of 1.97 ms period gamma-ray pulsations from the 75 minute orbital-period binary pulsar now named PSR J1653-0158. The associated Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray source 4FGL J1653.6-0158 has long been expected to harbor a binary millisecond pulsar. Despite the pulsar-like gamma-ray spectrum and candidate optical/X-ray associations -- whose periodic brightness modulations suggested an orbit -- no radio pulsations had been found in many searches. The pulsar was discovered by directly searching the gamma-ray data using the GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home distributed volunteer computing system. The multi-dimensional parameter space was bounded by positional and orbital constraints obtained from the optical counterpart. More sensitive analyses of archival and new radio data using knowledge of the pulsar timing solution yield very stringent upper limits on radio emission. Any radio emission is thus either exceptionally weak, or eclipsed for a large fraction of the time. The pulsar has one of the three lowest inferred surface magnetic-field strengths of any known pulsar with $B_{rm surf} approx 4 times 10^{7},$G. The resulting mass function, combined with models of the companion stars optical light curve and spectra, suggests a pulsar mass $gtrsim 2,M_{odot}$. The companion is light-weight with mass $sim 0.01,M_{odot}$, and the orbital period is the shortest known for any rotation-powered binary pulsar. This discovery demonstrates the Fermi Large Area Telescopes potential to discover extreme pulsars that would otherwise remain undetected.
We report multi-wavelength observations of the unidentified Fermi object 2FGL J1653.6-0159. With the help of high-resolution X-ray observation, we have identified an X-ray and optical counterpart of 2FGL J1653.6-0159. The source exhibits a periodic modulation of 75 min in optical and possibly also in X-ray. We suggest that 2FGL J1653.6-0159 is a compact binary system with an orbital period of 75 min. Combining the gamma-ray and X-ray properties, 2FGL J1653.6-0159 is potentially a black widow/redback type gamma-ray millisecond pulsar (MSP). The optical and X-ray lightcurve profiles show that the companion is mildly heated by the high-energy emission and the X-rays are from intrabinary shock. Although no radio pulsation has been detected yet, we estimated that the spin period of the MSP is ~2ms based on a theoretical model. If pulsation can be confirmed in the future, 2FGL J1653.6-0159 will become the first ultracompact rotation-powered MSP.
We report on the discovery and the timing analysis of the first eclipsing accretion-powered millisecond X-ray pulsar (AMXP): SWIFT J1749.4-2807. The neutron star rotates at a frequency of ~517.9 Hz and is in a binary system with an orbital period of 8.8 hrs and a projected semi-major axis of ~1.90 lt-s. Assuming a neutron star between 0.8 and 2.2 M_o and using the mass function of the system and the eclipse half-angle, we constrain the mass of the companion and the inclination of the system to be in the ~0.46-0.81 M_o and $sim74.4^o-77.3^o range, respectively. To date, this is the tightest constraint on the orbital inclination of any AMXP. As in other AMXPs, the pulse profile shows harmonic content up to the 3rd overtone. However, this is the first AMXP to show a 1st overtone with rms amplitudes between ~6% and ~23%, which is the strongest ever seen, and which can be more than two times stronger than the fundamental. The fact that SWIFT J1749.4-2807 is an eclipsing system which shows uncommonly strong harmonic content suggests that it might be the best source to date to set constraints on neutron star properties including compactness and geometry.
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