Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/235619

Title

Four highly dispersed millisecond pulsars discovered in the arecibo palfa galactic plane survey

Author(s)

Crawford, F.;  Stovall, K.;  Lyne, A. G.;  Stappers, B. W.;  Nice, D. J.;  Stairs, I. H.;  Lazarus, P.;  Hessels, J. W. T.;  Freire, P. C. C.;  Allen, B.;  Bhat, N. D. R.;  Bogdanov, S.;  Brazier, A.;  Camilo, F.;  Champion, D. J.;  Chatterjee, S.;  Cognard, I.;  Cordes, J. M.;  Deneva, J. S.;  Desvignes, G.;  Jenet, F. A.;  Kaspi, V. M.;  Knispel, B.;  Kramer, M.;  Van Leeuwen, J.;  Lorimer, D. R.;  Lynch, R.;  McLaughlin, M. A.;  Ransom, S. M.;  Scholz, P.;  Siemens, X.;  Venkataraman, A.

Abstract

We present the discovery and phase-coherent timing of four highly dispersed millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from the Arecibo PALFA Galactic plane survey: PSRs J1844+0115, J1850+0124, J1900+0308, and J1944+2236. Three of the four pulsars are in binary systems with low-mass companions, which are most likely white dwarfs, and which have orbital periods on the order of days. The fourth pulsar is isolated. All four pulsars have large dispersion measures (DM >100 pc cm–3), are distant (3.4 kpc), faint at 1.4 GHz ( 0.2 mJy), and are fully recycled (with spin periods P between 3.5 and 4.9 ms). The three binaries also have very small orbital eccentricities, as expected for tidally circularized, fully recycled systems with low-mass companions. These four pulsars have DM/P ratios that are among the highest values for field MSPs in the Galaxy. These discoveries bring the total number of confirmed MSPs from the PALFA survey to 15. The discovery of these MSPs illustrates the power of PALFA for finding weak, distant MSPs at low-Galactic latitudes. This is important for accurate estimates of the Galactic MSP population and for the number of MSPs that the Square Kilometer Array can be expected to detect.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing

Source

Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 757, no. 1 (Sep 2012), article no. 90

Publication year

2012

FOR Code(s)

0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences;  0305 Organic Chemistry;  0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)

Keyword(s)

PSR J1844+0115;  PSR J1850+0124;  PSR J1900+0308;  PSR J1944+2236;  Pulsars

Publisher

Institute of Physics Publishing

ISSN

0004-637X

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x/757/1/90

Copyright

Copyright © 2012 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The American Astronomical Society does not allow Swinburne Research Bank to archive either the accepted manuscript or the published version of the article. However you can find an earlier version of the full text here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1273

Additional information

The authors acknowledge support from the NSF grant AST-0807151, NSERC Discovery Grants, FQRNT via the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique du Quebec, CIFAR, CANARIE, Compute Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, a Killam Research Fellowship, an NWO Veni Fellowship, the Max Planck Society, an NSERC PGS scholarship, an IMPRS fellowship, and the European Research Council for the ERC Starting Grant BEACON under contract No. 279702.

Peer reviewed