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Title: Einstein@home discovery of four young gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi LAT data

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [1];  [5];  [1];  [1];  [6];  [5];  [7];  [8];  [1];  [5];  [9];  [10];  [6]
  1. Max-Planck-Institut fur Gravitationphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Hannover (Germany); Leibniz Univ. Hannover, Hannover (Germany)
  2. Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn (Germany); Univ. d'Orleans/CNRS, Orleans Cedex (France)
  3. Max-Planck-Institut fur Gravitationphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Hannover (Germany); Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States); Leibniz Univ. Hannover, Hannover (Germany)
  4. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  5. Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn (Germany)
  6. Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States)
  7. Australia Telescope National Facility (Australia)
  8. Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn (Germany); The Univ. of Manchester, Manchester (United Kingdom)
  9. Max-Planck-Institut fur Gravitationphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Hannover (Germany); Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States)
  10. Naval Research Lab., Washington, D.C. (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here, 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 × 1034—1036 erg s–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.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1356551
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters, Vol. 779, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-8205
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 27 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (30)

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The Galactic Population of Young γ-Ray Pulsars journal January 2011
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Cited By (14)

A Survey for hα Pulsar bow Shocks journal March 2014
REFINING THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE SOURCE CATALOGS journal February 2015
Observational diversity of magnetized neutron stars journal September 2019
Optical emission associated with the Galactic supernova remnant G179.0+2.6 journal April 2018
Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar journal February 2018
The Einstein@Home Gamma-Ray Pulsar Survey. i. Search Methods, Sensitivity, and Discovery of new Young Gamma-Ray Pulsars journal January 2017
The Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Survey. II. Source Selection, Spectral Analysis, and Multiwavelength Follow-up journal February 2018
Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar text January 2018
Optimized Blind Gamma-ray Pulsar Searches at Fixed Computing Budget text January 2014
Refining the associations of the Fermi Large Area Telescope Source Catalogs text January 2015
The Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Survey. I. Search Methods, Sensitivity and Discovery of New Young Gamma-ray Pulsars text January 2016
The Einstein@Home Gamma-Ray Pulsar Survey II. Source Selection, Spectral Analysis and Multi-wavelength Follow-up text January 2017
Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar text January 2018
Optical Emission Associated with the Galactic Supernova Remnant G179.0+2.6 text January 2018

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
gamma rays: stars
pulsars: general
pulsars: individual (PSRs J0554+3107 J1422–6138 J1522–5735 J1932+1916)