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Title: GMRT discovery of PSR J1544+4937: An eclipsing black-widow pulsar identified with a Fermi-LAT source

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Letters
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [2];  [7];  [8];  [6];  [4];  [9];  [9];  [4];  [4];  [10];  [11];  [2]
  1. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune (India)
  2. Naval Research Lab., Washington, D.C. (United States)
  3. Inter-Univ. Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune (India)
  4. Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA (United States). SLAC National Accelerator Lab.
  5. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Charlottesville, VA (United States)
  6. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  7. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Arecibo Observatory, Arecibo, Puerto Rico (United States)
  8. Lab. de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement, Orleans Cedex (France); Observatoire de Paris, Nancay (France)
  9. Australia Telescope National Facility, Epping, NSW (Australia)
  10. Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States)
  11. Praxis Inc., Alexandria, VA (United States); Naval Research Lab., Washington, D. C. (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, we performed deep observations to search for radio pulsations in the directions of unidentified Fermi-Large Area Telescope γ-ray sources. We report the discovery of an eclipsing black-widow millisecond pulsar, PSR J1544+4937, identified with the uncataloged γ-ray source FERMI J1544.2+4941. This 2.16 ms pulsar is in a 2.9 hr compact circular orbit with a very low mass companion (Mc > 0.017M ⊙). At 322 MHz this pulsar is found to be eclipsing for 13% of its orbit, whereas at 607 MHz the pulsar is detected throughout the low-frequency eclipse phase. Variations in the eclipse ingress phase are observed, indicating a clumpy and variable eclipsing medium. Moreover, additional short-duration absorption events are observed around the eclipse boundaries. Finally, using the radio timing ephemeris we were able to detect γ-ray pulsations from this pulsar, confirming it as the source powering the γ-ray emission.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1356569
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Letters, Vol. 773, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-8205
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 33 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (18)

Timing of PSR J2055+3829, an eclipsing black widow pulsar discovered with the Nançay Radio Telescope journal September 2019
THE SECOND FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE CATALOG OF GAMMA-RAY PULSARS journal September 2013
The expanded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope journal November 2018
The High Time Resolution Universe survey – XIV. Discovery of 23 pulsars through GPU-accelerated reprocessing journal December 2018
Long-term variability of a black widow’s eclipses – A decade of PSR J2051$-$0827 journal September 2019
Diagnosing pulsar winds in black-widow, redback, and other binary millisecond pulsar systems journal December 2019
High Energy Radiation from Spider Pulsars journal December 2019
The Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Survey. II. Source Selection, Spectral Analysis, and Multiwavelength Follow-up journal February 2018
A Post-correlation Beamformer for Time-domain Studies of Pulsars and Transients journal September 2018
The GMRT High-resolution Southern Sky Survey for Pulsars and Transients. II. New Discoveries, Timing, and Polarization Properties journal August 2019
Detection and Timing of Gamma-Ray Pulsations from the 707 Hz Pulsar J0952−0607 journal September 2019
Detection and Timing of Gamma-Ray Pulsations from the 707 Hz Pulsar J0952-0607 other January 2019
The Second Fermi Large area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-Ray Pulsars text January 2013
Discovery of PSR J1227-4853: A transition from a low-mass X-ray binary to a redback millisecond pulsar text January 2014
The Einstein@Home Gamma-Ray Pulsar Survey II. Source Selection, Spectral Analysis and Multi-wavelength Follow-up text January 2017
Post-correlation beamformer for time-domain studies of pulsars and transients text January 2018
The Expanded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope text January 2019
The GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky Survey for pulsars and transients -II. New discoveries, timing and polarization properties text January 2019

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
binaries: eclipsing
pulsars: general
pulsars: individual (PSR J1544+4937)