Discovery of a Gamma-Ray Black Widow Pulsar by GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home

Nieder, L.; Clark, C. J.; Kandel, D.; Romani, R. W.; Bassa, C. G.; Allen, B.; Ashok, A.; Cognard, I.; Fehrmann, H.; Freire, P.; Karuppusamy, R.; Kramer, M.; Li, D.; Machenschalk, B.; Pan, Z.; Papa, M. A.; Ransom, S. M.; Ray, P. S.; Roy, J.; Wang, P.; Wu, J.; Aulbert, C.; Barr, E. D.; Beheshtipour, B.; Behnke, O.; Bhattacharyya, B.; Breton, R. P.; Camilo, F.; Choquet, C.; Dhillon, V. S.; Ferrara, E. C.; Guillemot, L.; Hessels, J. T.; Kerr, M.; Kwang, S. A.; Marsh, T. R.; Mickaliger, M. B.; Pleunis, Z.; Pletsch, H. J.; Roberts, M. E.; Sanpa-arsa, S.; Steltner, B.

doi:10.3847/2041-8213/abbc02

Title: Discovery of a Gamma-Ray Black Widow Pulsar by GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home

Journal Article · Thu Oct 22 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/abbc02· OSTI ID:1769262

;

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 multidimensional 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_surf ≈ 4 × 10⁷ G. The resulting mass function, combined with models of the companion star's optical light curve and spectra, suggests a pulsar mass gsim² M_⊙. The companion is lightweight with mass ~0.01 M_⊙, and the orbital period is the shortest known for any rotation-powered binary pulsar. This discovery demonstrates the Fermi Large Area Telescope's potential to discover extreme pulsars that would otherwise remain undetected.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Cite

Export

Save

Research Organization:: SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

Contributing Organization:: LIGO Collaboration

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-76SF00515

OSTI ID:: 1769262

Journal Information:: The Astrophysical Journal. Letters (Online), Vol. 902, Issue 2; ISSN 2041-8213

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

References (59)

Discovery of a Millisecond Pulsar in the 5.4 day Binary 3fgl J1417.5–4402: Observing the late Phase of Pulsar Recycling Camilo, F.; Reynolds, J. E.; Ransom, S. M. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 820, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/820/1/6	journal	March 2016
THREE MILLISECOND PULSARS IN FERMI LAT UNASSOCIATED BRIGHT SOURCES Ransom, S. M.; Ray, P. S.; Camilo, F. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 727, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/727/1/L16	journal	December 2010
GMRT DISCOVERY OF PSR J1544+4937: AN ECLIPSING BLACK-WIDOW PULSAR IDENTIFIED WITH A FERMI -LAT SOURCE Bhattacharyya, B.; Roy, J.; Ray, P. S. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 773, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/773/1/L12	journal	July 2013
CLASSIFICATION AND RANKING OF FERMI LAT GAMMA-RAY SOURCES FROM THE 3FGL CATALOG USING MACHINE LEARNING TECHNIQUES Saz Parkinson, P. M.; Xu, H.; Yu, P. L. H. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 820, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/820/1/8	journal	March 2016
The Astropy Project: Building an Open-science Project and Status of the v2.0 Core Package Price-Whelan, A. M.; Sipőcz, B. M.; Günther, H. M. The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 156, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/aabc4f	journal	August 2018
Fourier Techniques for Very Long Astrophysical Time-Series Analysis Ransom, Scott M.; Eikenberry, Stephen S.; Middleditch, John The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 124, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1086/342285	journal	September 2002
Parameter choices and ranges for continuous gravitational wave searches for steadily spinning neutron stars Jones, D. I. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 453, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1584	journal	August 2015
psrqpy: a python interface for querying the ATNF pulsar catalogue Pitkin, Matthew The Journal of Open Source Software, Vol. 3, Issue 22 https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00538	journal	February 2018
A Dense Companion to the Short-period Millisecond Pulsar Binary PSR J0636+5128 Kaplan, D. L.; Stovall, K.; Kerkwijk, M. H. van The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 864, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aad54c	journal	August 2018
Gaia Data Release 2 : Summary of the contents and survey properties Brown, A. G. A.; Vallenari, A.; Prusti, T. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 616 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833051	journal	August 2018
A Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Link Archibald, A. M.; Stairs, I. H.; Ransom, S. M. Science, Vol. 324, Issue 5933 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1172740	journal	May 2009
Binary Millisecond Pulsar Discovery via Gamma-Ray Pulsations Pletsch, H. J.; Guillemot, L.; Fehrmann, H. Science, Vol. 338, Issue 6112 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1229054	journal	October 2012
The Einstein@Home Gamma-Ray Pulsar Survey. i. Search Methods, Sensitivity, and Discovery of new Young Gamma-Ray Pulsars Clark, C. J.; Wu, J.; Pletsch, H. J. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 834, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/106	journal	January 2017
PRECISE γ-RAY TIMING AND RADIO OBSERVATIONS OF 17 FERMI γ-RAY PULSARS Ray, P. S.; Kerr, M.; Parent, D. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 194, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/194/2/17	journal	April 2011
Discovery of an Ultracompact Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsar Binary Candidate Kong, Albert K. H.; Jin, Ruolan; Yen, T. -C. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 794, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/794/2/L22	journal	October 2014
Low-radio-frequency eclipses of the redback pulsar J2215+5135 observed in the image plane with LOFAR Broderick, J. W.; Fender, R. P.; Breton, R. P. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 459, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw794	journal	April 2016
LOFAR Discovery of the Fastest-spinning Millisecond Pulsar in the Galactic Field Bassa, C. G.; Pleunis, Z.; Hessels, J. W. T. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 846, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa8400	journal	September 2017
ULTRACAM: an ultrafast, triple-beam CCD camera for high-speed astrophysics Dhillon, V. S.; Marsh, T. R.; Stevenson, M. J. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 378, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11881.x	journal	June 2007
A 3D Dust Map Based on Gaia , Pan-STARRS 1, and 2MASS Green, Gregory M.; Schlafly, Edward; Zucker, Catherine The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 887, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab5362	journal	December 2019
Optical Spectroscopy and Demographics of Redback Millisecond Pulsar Binaries Strader, Jay; Swihart, Samuel; Chomiuk, Laura The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 872, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aafbaa	journal	February 2019
The evolution of ultracompact X-ray binaries van Haaften, L. M.; Nelemans, G.; Voss, R. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 537 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201117880	journal	January 2012
Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar Clark, Colin J.; Pletsch, Holger J.; Wu, Jason Science Advances, Vol. 4, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao7228	journal	February 2018
The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way McMillan, Paul J. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 465, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw2759	journal	October 2016
A millisecond pulsar in an eclipsing binary Fruchter, A. S.; Stinebring, D. R.; Taylor, J. H. Nature, Vol. 333, Issue 6170 https://doi.org/10.1038/333237a0	journal	May 1988
The Third EGRET Catalog of High‐Energy Gamma‐Ray Sources Hartman, R. C.; Bertsch, D. L.; Bloom, S. D. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 123, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1086/313231	journal	July 1999
Periodograms for Multiband Astronomical time Series VanderPlas, Jacob T.; Ivezic´, Željko The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 812, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/812/1/18	journal	October 2015
Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy Robitaille, Thomas P.; Tollerud, Erik J.; Greenfield, Perry Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 558 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201322068	journal	September 2013
The low-frequency radio eclipses of the black widow pulsar J1810+1744 Polzin, E. J.; Breton, R. P.; Clarke, A. O. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 476, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty349	journal	February 2018
THE LARGE AREA TELESCOPE ON THE FERMI GAMMA-RAY SPACE TELESCOPE MISSION Atwood, W. B.; Abdo, A. A.; Ackermann, M. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 697, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/697/2/1071	journal	May 2009
FAST in Space: Considerations for a Multibeam, Multipurpose Survey Using China's 500-m Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) Li, Di; Wang, Pei; Qian, Lei IEEE Microwave Magazine, Vol. 19, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1109/MMM.2018.2802178	journal	May 2018
Gravitational wave emission from rotating superfluid neutron stars Jones, D. I. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 402, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.16059.x	journal	March 2010
Atmospheric Circulation on Black Widow Companions Kandel, D.; Romani, Roger W. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 892, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab7b62	journal	April 2020
LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray van Haarlem, M. P.; Wise, M. W.; Gunst, A. W. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 556 https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201220873	journal	July 2013
Pulsar searches of Fermi unassociated sources with the Effelsberg telescope Barr, E. D.; Guillemot, L.; Champion, D. J. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 429, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sts449	journal	December 2012
Optimized Blind Gamma-Ray Pulsar Searches at Fixed Computing Budget Pletsch, Holger J.; Clark, Colin J. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 795, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/795/1/75	journal	October 2014
Bayesian estimation of pulsar parameters from gravitational wave data Dupuis, Réjean J.; Woan, Graham Physical Review D, Vol. 72, Issue 10 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.102002	journal	November 2005
FERMI /LARGE AREA TELESCOPE BRIGHT GAMMA-RAY SOURCE LIST Abdo, A. A.; Ackermann, M.; Ajello, M. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 183, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/183/1/46	journal	June 2009
Detection and Timing of Gamma-Ray Pulsations from the 707 Hz Pulsar J0952−0607 Nieder, L.; Clark, C. J.; Bassa, C. G. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 883, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab357e	journal	September 2019
Novel modelling of ultracompact X-ray binary evolution – stable mass transfer from white dwarfs to neutron stars Sengar, Rahul; Tauris, Thomas M.; Langer, Norbert Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Vol. 470, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slx064	journal	April 2017
Approximations to the radii of Roche lobes Eggleton, P. P. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 268 https://doi.org/10.1086/160960	journal	May 1983
The Australia Telescope National Facility Pulsar Catalogue Manchester, R. N.; Hobbs, G. B.; Teoh, A. The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 129, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1086/428488	journal	April 2005
Importance Nested Sampling and the MultiNest Algorithm Feroz, Farhan; Hobson, Michael P.; Cameron, Ewan The Open Journal of Astrophysics, Vol. 2, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.21105/astro.1306.2144	journal	November 2019
KOI 1224: A FOURTH BLOATED HOT WHITE DWARF COMPANION FOUND WITH KEPLER Breton, R. P.; Rappaport, S. A.; van Kerkwijk, M. H. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 748, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/748/2/115	journal	March 2012
DISCOVERY OF THE OPTICAL COUNTERPARTS TO FOUR ENERGETIC FERMI MILLISECOND PULSARS Breton, R. P.; van Kerkwijk, M. H.; Roberts, M. S. E. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 769, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/769/2/108	journal	May 2013
TIMING GAMMA-RAY PULSARS WITH THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE: TIMING NOISE AND ASTROMETRY Kerr, M.; Ray, P. S.; Johnston, S. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 814, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/814/2/128	journal	November 2015
Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015–2017 LIGO Data Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Abbott, T. D. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 879, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab20cb	journal	June 2019
First results and future prospects for dual-harmonic searches for gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars Pitkin, M.; Gill, C.; Jones, D. I. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 453, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1931	journal	September 2015
2fgl J1653.6–0159: a new low in Evaporating Pulsar Binary Periods Romani, Roger W.; Filippenko, Alexei V.; Cenko, S. Bradley The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 793, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/793/1/L20	journal	September 2014
B-ducted Heating of Black Widow Companions Sanchez, Nicolas; Romani, Roger W. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 845, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa7a02	journal	August 2017
Improving Sensitivity to weak Pulsations with Photon Probability Weighting Kerr, M. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 732, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/732/1/38	journal	April 2011
Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment Hunter, John D. Computing in Science & Engineering, Vol. 9, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2007.55	journal	January 2007
Exploiting Orbital Constraints from Optical Data to Detect Binary Gamma-Ray Pulsars Nieder, L.; Allen, B.; Clark, C. J. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 901, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abaf53	journal	October 2020
On the orbital period change of the binary pulsar PSR 1913 + 16 Damour, Thibault; Taylor, J. H. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 366 https://doi.org/10.1086/169585	journal	January 1991
A Radio Pulsar Spinning at 716 Hz Hessels, J. W. T. Science, Vol. 311, Issue 5769 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1123430	journal	March 2006
The NumPy Array: A Structure for Efficient Numerical Computation van der Walt, Stéfan; Colbert, S. Chris; Varoquaux, Gaël Computing in Science & Engineering, Vol. 13, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2011.37	journal	March 2011
THE SECOND FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE CATALOG OF GAMMA-RAY PULSARS Abdo, A. A.; Ajello, M.; Allafort, A. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 208, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/208/2/17	journal	September 2013
Generalized $F$ -statistic: Multiple detectors and multiple gravitational wave pulsars Cutler, Curt; Schutz, Bernard F. Physical Review D, Vol. 72, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.063006	journal	September 2005
Study of spider pulsar binary eclipses and discovery of an eclipse mechanism transition Polzin, E. J.; Breton, R. P.; Bhattacharyya, B. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 494, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa596	journal	March 2020
Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog Abdollahi, S.; Acero, F.; Ackermann, M. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 247, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ab6bcb	journal	March 2020

Similar Records

Discovery, Timing, and Multiwavelength Observations of the Black Widow Millisecond Pulsar PSR J1555–2908

Journal Article · Thu Mar 17 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · The Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1769262

Ray, Paul S.; Nieder, Lars; Clark, Colin J.; +21 more

Discovery of a millisecond pulsar in the 5.4 day binary 3FGL J1417.5–4402: Observing the late phase of pulsar recycling

Journal Article · Sun Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1769262

Camilo, F.; Halpern, J. P.; Bogdanov, S.; +8 more

Multiwavelength Observations of the Redback Millisecond Pulsar J1048+2339

Journal Article · Thu May 26 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · The Astrophysical Journal (Online) · OSTI ID:1769262

Deneva, J. S.; Ray, P. S.; Camilo, F.; +9 more

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

Title: Discovery of a Gamma-Ray Black Widow Pulsar by GPU-accelerated Einstein@Home

Citation Formats

References (59)

Linked Research (1)

Similar Records

Related Subjects