EINSTEIN-HOME DISCOVERY OF 24 PULSARS IN THE PARKES MULTI-BEAM PULSAR SURVEY

Journal Article · Tue Sep 10 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/774/2/93· OSTI ID:22133910

Knispel, B.; Kim, H.; Allen, B.; Aulbert, C.; Bock, O.; Eggenstein, H. -B.; Fehrmann, H.; Machenschalk, B. ^[1]; Eatough, R. P.; Keane, E. F.; Kramer, M. ^[2]; Anderson, D. ^[3]; Crawford, F.; Rastawicki, D. ^[4]; Hammer, D.; Papa, M. A.; Siemens, X. ^[5]; Lyne, A. G. ^[6]; Miller, R. B. ^[7]; others, and

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1. Albert-Einstein-Institut, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik, D-30167 Hannover (Germany)
2. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
3. University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Franklin and Marshall College, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604 (United States)
5. Physics Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211 (United States)
6. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL (United Kingdom)
7. Department of Physics, West Virginia University, 111 White Hall, Morgantown, WV 26506 (United States)

We have conducted a new search for radio pulsars in compact binary systems in the Parkes multi-beam pulsar survey (PMPS) data, employing novel methods to remove the Doppler modulation from binary motion. This has yielded unparalleled sensitivity to pulsars in compact binaries. The required computation time of Almost-Equal-To 17, 000 CPU core years was provided by the distributed volunteer computing project Einstein-Home, which has a sustained computing power of about 1 PFlop s{sup -1}. We discovered 24 new pulsars in our search, 18 of which were isolated pulsars, and 6 were members of binary systems. Despite the wide filterbank channels and relatively slow sampling time of the PMPS data, we found pulsars with very large ratios of dispersion measure (DM) to spin period. Among those is PSR J1748-3009, the millisecond pulsar with the highest known DM ( Almost-Equal-To 420 pc cm{sup -3}). We also discovered PSR J1840-0643, which is in a binary system with an orbital period of 937 days, the fourth largest known. The new pulsar J1750-2536 likely belongs to the rare class of intermediate-mass binary pulsars. Three of the isolated pulsars show long-term nulling or intermittency in their emission, further increasing this growing family. Our discoveries demonstrate the value of distributed volunteer computing for data-driven astronomy and the importance of applying new analysis methods to extensively searched data.

• OSTI ID: 22133910
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 774, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ASTRONOMY
BEAMS
DATA ANALYSIS
DOPPLER EFFECT
EMISSION
PULSARS
SENSITIVITY