EINSTEIN@HOME DISCOVERY OF FOUR YOUNG GAMMA-RAY PULSARS IN FERMI LAT DATA
- Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), D-30167 Hannover (Germany)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
- Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53201 (United States)
- CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Australia Telescope National Facility (Australia)
We report the discovery of four gamma-ray pulsars, detected in computing-intensive blind searches of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). The pulsars were found using a novel search approach, combining volunteer distributed computing via Einstein@Home and methods originally developed in gravitational-wave astronomy. The pulsars PSRs J0554+3107, J1422–6138, J1522–5735, and J1932+1916 are young and energetic, with characteristic ages between 35 and 56 kyr and spin-down powers in the range 6 × 10{sup 34}—10{sup 36} erg s{sup –1}. They are located in the Galactic plane and have rotation rates of less than 10 Hz, among which the 2.1 Hz spin frequency of PSR J0554+3107 is the slowest of any known gamma-ray pulsar. For two of the new pulsars, we find supernova remnants coincident on the sky and discuss the plausibility of such associations. Deep radio follow-up observations found no pulsations, suggesting that all four pulsars are radio-quiet as viewed from Earth. These discoveries, the first gamma-ray pulsars found by volunteer computing, motivate continued blind pulsar searches of the many other unidentified LAT gamma-ray sources.
- OSTI ID:
- 22364093
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 779, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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