FOUR HIGHLY DISPERSED MILLISECOND PULSARS DISCOVERED IN THE ARECIBO PALFA GALACTIC PLANE SURVEY

Journal Article · Thu Sep 20 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/757/1/90· OSTI ID:22092234

Crawford, F. ^[1]; Stovall, K. ^[2]; Lyne, A. G.; Stappers, B. W. ^[3]; Nice, D. J. ^[4]; Stairs, I. H. ^[5]; Lazarus, P. ^[6]; Hessels, J. W. T. ^[7]; Freire, P. C. C.; Champion, D. J.; Desvignes, G. ^[8]; Allen, B. ^[9]; Bhat, N. D. R.; Camilo, F. ^[10]; Bogdanov, S. ^[11]; Brazier, A.; Chatterjee, S.; Cordes, J. M. ^[12]; Cognard, I. ^[13]; others, and

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1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Franklin and Marshall College, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604 (United States)
2. Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, University of Texas at Brownsville, Brownsville, TX 78520 (United States)
3. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL (United Kingdom)
4. Department of Physics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA 18042 (United States)
5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
6. Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
7. ASTRON, The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Postbus 2, 7990-AA Dwingeloo (Netherlands)
8. Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie, auf dem Huegel 69, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
9. Albert-Einstein-Institut, Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik, D-30167 Hannover (Germany)
10. Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 (Australia)
11. Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
12. Astronomy Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)
13. Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace, LPC2E, CNRS et Universite d'Orleans, and Station de radioastronomie de Nancay, Observatoire de Paris, F-18330 Nancay (France)

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{sup -3}), are distant ({approx}> 3.4 kpc), faint at 1.4 GHz ({approx}< 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.

• OSTI ID: 22092234
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 757, Issue 1; 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
ASTROPHYSICS
BINARY STARS
GHZ RANGE
MASS
MILKY WAY
PULSARS
SPIN
WHITE DWARF STARS