Abstract
We report on Bayesian estimation of the radius, mass, and hot surface regions of the massive millisecond pulsar PSR J0740+6620, conditional on pulse-profile modeling of Neutron Star Interior ...Composition Explorer X-ray Timing Instrument event data. We condition on informative pulsar mass, distance, and orbital inclination priors derived from the joint North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves and Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment/Pulsar wideband radio timing measurements of Fonseca et al. We use XMM-Newton European Photon Imaging Camera spectroscopic event data to inform our X-ray likelihood function. The prior support of the pulsar radius is truncated at 16 km to ensure coverage of current dense matter models. We assume conservative priors on instrument calibration uncertainty. We constrain the equatorial radius and mass of PSR J0740+6620 to be
12.39
−
0.98
+
1.30
km and
2.072
−
0.066
+
0.067
M
⊙
respectively, each reported as the posterior credible interval bounded by the 16% and 84% quantiles, conditional on surface hot regions that are non-overlapping spherical caps of fully ionized hydrogen atmosphere with uniform effective temperature; a posteriori, the temperature is
log
10
(
T
K
)
=
5.99
−
0.06
+
0.05
for each hot region. All software for the X-ray modeling framework is open-source and all data, model, and sample information is publicly available, including analysis notebooks and model modules in the Python language. Our marginal likelihood function of mass and equatorial radius is proportional to the marginal joint posterior density of those parameters (within the prior support) and can thus be computed from the posterior samples.
We present a new analysis of the profile data from the 47 millisecond pulsars comprising the 12.5 yr data set of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, which is presented ...in a parallel paper (Alam et al., hereafter NG12.5). Our reprocessing is performed using "wideband" timing methods, which use frequency-dependent template profiles, simultaneous time-of-arrival (TOA) and dispersion measure (DM) measurements from broadband observations, and novel analysis techniques. In particular, the wideband DM measurements are used to constrain the DM portion of the timing model. We compare the ensemble timing results to those in NG12.5 by examining the timing residuals, timing models, and noise-model components. There is a remarkable level of agreement across all metrics considered. Our best-timed pulsars produce encouragingly similar results to those from NG12.5. In certain cases, such as high-DM pulsars with profile broadening or sources that are weak and scintillating, wideband timing techniques prove to be beneficial, leading to more precise timing model parameters by 10%-15%. The high-precision, multiband measurements of several pulsars indicate frequency-dependent DMs. Compared to the narrowband analysis in NG12.5, the TOA volume is reduced by a factor of 33, which may ultimately facilitate computational speed-ups for complex pulsar timing array analyses. This first wideband pulsar timing data set is a stepping stone, and its consistent results with NG12.5 assure us that such data sets are appropriate for gravitational wave analyses.
We present time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements and timing models of 47 millisecond pulsars observed from 2004 to 2017 at the Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope by the North American ...Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). The observing cadence was three to four weeks for most pulsars over most of this time span, with weekly observations of six sources. These data were collected for use in low-frequency gravitational wave searches and for other astrophysical purposes. We detail our observational methods and present a set of TOA measurements, based on "narrowband" analysis, in which many TOAs are calculated within narrow radio-frequency bands for data collected simultaneously across a wide bandwidth. A separate set of "wideband" TOAs will be presented in a companion paper. We detail a number of methodological changes, compared to our previous work, which yield a cleaner and more uniformly processed data set. Our timing models include several new astrometric and binary pulsar measurements, including previously unpublished values for the parallaxes of PSRs J1832−0836 and J2322+2057, the secular derivatives of the projected semimajor orbital axes of PSRs J0613−0200 and J2229+2643, and the first detection of the Shapiro delay in PSR J2145−0750. We report detectable levels of red noise in the time series for 14 pulsars. As a check on timing model reliability, we investigate the stability of astrometric parameters across data sets of different lengths. We also report flux density measurements for all pulsars observed. Searches for stochastic and continuous gravitational waves using these data will be subjects of forthcoming publications.
We present the discovery of five millisecond pulsars found in the mid-Galactic latitude portion of the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey. The pulsars have rotational periods from ∼2.3 ms to ...∼7.5 ms, and all are in binary systems with orbital periods ranging from ∼0.3 to ∼150 d. In four of these systems, the most likely companion is a white dwarf, with minimum masses of ∼0.2 M⊙. The other pulsar, J1731−1847, has a very low mass companion and exhibits eclipses and is thus a member of the 'black widow' class of pulsar binaries. These eclipses have been observed in bands centred near frequencies of 700, 1400 and 3000 MHz, from which measurements have been made of the electron density in the eclipse region. These measurements have been used to examine some possible eclipse mechanisms. The eclipse and other properties of this source are used to perform a comparison with the other known eclipsing and 'black widow' pulsars.
These new discoveries occupy a short-period and high-dispersion measure (DM) region of parameter space, which we demonstrate is a direct consequence of the high time and frequency resolution of the HTRU survey. The large implied distances to our new discoveries make observation of their companions unlikely with both current optical telescopes and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The extremely circular orbits make any advance of periastron measurements highly unlikely. No relativistic Shapiro delays are obvious in any of the systems although the low flux densities would make their detection difficult unless the orbits were fortuitously edge-on.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we compare the characteristics of pulsars with a high spin‐down energy‐loss rate () against those with a low . We show that the differences in the total intensity pulse ...morphology between the two classes are in general rather subtle. A much more significant difference is the fractional polarization which is very high for high pulsars and low for low pulsars. The at the transition is very similar to the death line predicted for curvature radiation. This suggests a possible link between high energy and radio emission in pulsars and could imply that γ‐ray efficiency is correlated with the degree of linear polarization in the radio band. The degree of circular polarization is in general higher in the second component of doubles, which is possibly caused by the effect of corotation on the curvature of the field lines in the inertial observer frame.
The most direct link between the high‐energy emission and the radio emission could be the subgroup of pulsars which we call the energetic wide beam pulsars. These young pulsars have very wide profiles with steep edges and are likely to be emitted from a single magnetic pole. The similarities with the high‐energy profiles suggest that both types of emission are produced at the same extended height range in the magnetosphere. Alternatively, the beams of the energetic wide beam pulsars could be magnified by propagation effects in the magnetosphere. This would naturally lead to decoupling of the wave modes, which could explain the high degree of linear polarization. As part of this study, we have discovered three previously unknown interpulse pulsars (and we detected one for the first time at 20 cm). We also obtained rotation measures for 18 pulsars whose values had not previously been measured.
Abstract
We present 294 pulsars found in GeV data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Another 33 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered in deep radio searches ...of LAT sources will likely reveal pulsations once phase-connected rotation ephemerides are achieved. A further dozen optical and/or X-ray binary systems colocated with LAT sources also likely harbor gamma-ray MSPs. This catalog thus reports roughly 340 gamma-ray pulsars and candidates, 10% of all known pulsars, compared to ≤11 known before Fermi. Half of the gamma-ray pulsars are young. Of these, the half that are undetected in radio have a broader Galactic latitude distribution than the young radio-loud pulsars. The others are MSPs, with six undetected in radio. Overall, ≥236 are bright enough above 50 MeV to fit the pulse profile, the energy spectrum, or both. For the common two-peaked profiles, the gamma-ray peak closest to the magnetic pole crossing generally has a softer spectrum. The spectral energy distributions tend to narrow as the spindown power
E
̇
decreases to its observed minimum near 10
33
erg s
−1
, approaching the shape for synchrotron radiation from monoenergetic electrons. We calculate gamma-ray luminosities when distances are available. Our all-sky gamma-ray sensitivity map is useful for population syntheses. The electronic catalog version provides gamma-ray pulsar ephemerides, properties, and fit results to guide and be compared with modeling results.
We report on the discovery of four millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) pulsar survey being conducted at the Parkes 64 m radio telescope. All four MSPs are in binary ...systems and are likely to have white dwarf companions. In addition, we present updated timing solutions for 12 previously published HTRU MSPs, revealing new observational parameters such as five proper motion measurements and significant temporal dispersion measure variations in PSR J1017−7156. We discuss the case of PSR J1801−3210, which shows no significant period derivative Ṗ after four years of timing data. Our best-fitting solution shows a Ṗ of the order of 10−23, an extremely small number compared to that of a typical MSP. However, it is likely that the pulsar lies beyond the Galactic Centre, and an unremarkable intrinsic Ṗ is reduced to close to zero by the Galactic potential acceleration. Furthermore, we highlight the potential to employ PSR J1801−3210 in the strong equivalence principle test due to its wide and circular orbit. In a broader comparison with the known MSP population, we suggest a correlation between higher mass functions and the presence of eclipses in 'very low mass binary pulsars', implying that eclipses are observed in systems with high orbital inclinations. We also suggest that the distribution of the total mass of binary systems is inversely related to the Galactic height distribution. Finally, we report on the first detection of PSRs J1543−5149 and J1811−2404 as gamma-ray pulsars.
Abstract
Braking index measurements offer the opportunity to explore the processes affecting the long-term spin evolution of pulsars and possible evolutionary connections between the various pulsar ...populations. In most cases, such measurements are difficult because of the presence of short-term phenomena, such as glitches and timing noise, which obscure the long-term trends. In particular, recoveries from large glitches are the main obstacle to measuring the braking indices of young pulsars like the Vela and Crab pulsars. We present a new method to overcome this problem and report on braking index measurements for the Vela-like pulsars, PSR B1800−21 and PSR B1823−13, together with an updated measurement for Vela. Additionally, the use of the method is extended to six more young glitching pulsars observed at Jodrell Bank Observatory and we are able to estimate four new braking indices. Values of braking indices describe the long-term evolution of the pulsars across the P–
$\dot{P}$
diagram. Despite some measurements being affected by considerable uncertainties, there is evidence for a common trend among young glitching pulsars, characterized by low braking indices n ≤ 2. Such values introduce a new variant in the evolution of young pulsars, and their relationship with other populations in the P–
$\dot{P}$
diagram, and imply that these pulsars could be a few times older than indicated by standard formulae. In this context, we analyse the case of PSR B1757−24 and conclude that the pulsar could be old enough to be related to the supernova remnant G5.4−1.2. Between glitches, the short-term evolution of Vela-like pulsars is characterized by large interglitch braking indices n
ig > 10. We interpret both short- and long-term trends as signatures of the large glitch activity, and speculate that they are driven by short-term post-glitch re-coupling and a cumulative long-term decoupling of superfluid to the rotation of the star.
PSR J1023+0038 is the first millisecond pulsar discovered to pulsate in the visible band; such a detection took place when the pulsar was surrounded by an accretion disk and also showed X-ray ...pulsations. We report on the first high time resolution observational campaign of this transitional pulsar in the disk state, using simultaneous observations in the optical (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, Nordic Optical Telescope, Telescopi Joan Oró), X-ray (XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, NICER), infrared (Gran Telescopio Canarias), and UV (Swift) bands. Optical and X-ray pulsations were detected simultaneously in the X-ray high-intensity mode in which the source spends ∼70% of the time, and both disappeared in the low mode, indicating a common underlying physical mechanism. In addition, optical and X-ray pulses were emitted within a few kilometers and had similar pulse shapes and distributions of the pulsed flux density compatible with a power-law relation F ∝ −0.7 connecting the optical and the 0.3-45 keV X-ray band. Optical pulses were also detected during flares with a pulsed flux reduced by one-third with respect to the high mode; the lack of a simultaneous detection of X-ray pulses is compatible with the lower photon statistics. We show that magnetically channeled accretion of plasma onto the surface of the neutron star cannot account for the optical pulsed luminosity (∼1031 erg s−1). On the other hand, magnetospheric rotation-powered pulsar emission would require an extremely efficient conversion of spin-down power into pulsed optical and X-ray emission. We then propose that optical and X-ray pulses are instead produced by synchrotron emission from the intrabinary shock that forms where a striped pulsar wind meets the accretion disk, within a few light cylinder radii away, ∼100 km, from the pulsar.
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