skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Pulsed Gamma Rays From The Original Millisecond And Black Widow Pulsars: A Case For Caustic Radio Emission?

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [7];  [7];  [8];  [7];  [9];  [10];  [7];  [1];  [11];  [12];  [13];  [4];  [1] more »;  [14];  [15];  [12];  [13];  [16];  [8];  [17];  [5] « less
  1. Max Planck Inst. for Radioastronomy, Bonn (Germany)
  2. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States); Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States)
  3. North-West Univ., Potchefstroom (South Africa)
  4. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  5. CNRS, Toulouse Cedex (France); Univ. of Toulouse (France)
  6. McGill Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada)
  7. Univ. of Manchester (United Kingdom)
  8. Lab. de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement (LPCE), Orleans (France); CNRS (France). Observatoire de Paris
  9. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  10. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Columbia Astrophysics Lab.
  11. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Bari (Italy)
  12. Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States)
  13. Australia Telescope National Facility, Epping, NSW (Australia)
  14. Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States); George Mason Univ., Fairfax, VA (United States)
  15. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Charlottesville, VA (United States)
  16. Univ. Bordeaux (France)
  17. Willamette Univ., Salem, OR (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We report the detection of pulsed gamma-ray emission from the fast millisecond pulsars (MSPs) B1937+21 (also known as J1939+2134) and B1957+20 (J1959+2048) using 18 months of survey data recorded by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) and timing solutions based on radio observations conducted at the Westerbork and Nancay radio telescopes. In addition, we analyzed archival RXTE and XMM-Newton X-ray data for the two MSPs, con rming the X-ray emission properties of PSR B1937+21 and nding evidence (~ 4σ) for pulsed emission from PSR B1957+20 for the rst time. In both cases the gamma-ray emission pro le is characterized by two peaks separated by half a rotation and are in close alignment with components observed in radio and X-rays. These two pulsars join PSRs J0034-0534 and J2214+3000 to form an emerging class of gamma-ray MSPs with phase-aligned peaks in different energy bands. The modeling of the radio and gamma-ray emission pro les suggests co-located emission regions in the outer magnetosphere.

Research Organization:
SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1356769
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 744, Issue 1; ISSN 0004-637X
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 54 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (67)

A Population of Gamma-Ray Millisecond Pulsars Seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope journal July 2009
Detection of 16 Gamma-Ray Pulsars Through Blind Frequency Searches Using the Fermi LAT journal July 2009
Detection of High-Energy Gamma-Ray Emission from the Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae with Fermi journal August 2009
The on-orbit calibration of the Fermi Large Area Telescope journal October 2009
A population of gamma-ray emitting globular clusters seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope journal November 2010
DISCOVERY OF PULSED γ-RAYS FROM PSR J0034–0534 WITH THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE: A CASE FOR CO-LOCATED RADIO AND γ-RAY EMISSION REGIONS journal March 2010
FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE FIRST SOURCE CATALOG journal May 2010
FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF THE CRAB PULSAR AND NEBULA journal December 2009
THE FIRST FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE CATALOG OF GAMMA-RAY PULSARS journal March 2010
PULSED GAMMA RAYS FROM THE MILLISECOND PULSAR J0030+0451 WITH THE FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE journal June 2009
Orbital variability in the eclipsing pulsar binary PSR B1957+20 journal May 1994
THE LARGE AREA TELESCOPE ON THE FERMI GAMMA-RAY SPACE TELESCOPE MISSION journal May 2009
A millisecond pulsar journal December 1982
Uncertainties of Modeling Gamma-Ray Pulsar Light Curves Using Vacuum Dipole Magnetic Field journal May 2010
A relativistic model of pulsar polarization journal March 1991
A CHANDRA X-RAY OBSERVATORY STUDY OF PSR J1740-5340 AND CANDIDATE MILLISECOND PULSARS IN THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER NGC 6397 journal December 2009
Very Long Baseline Array Measurement of Nine Pulsar Parallaxes journal June 2002
DISCOVERY OF TWO MILLISECOND PULSARS IN FERMI SOURCES WITH THE NANÇAY RADIO TELESCOPE journal April 2011
The pulsar synchrotron in 3D: curvature radiation: The pulsar synchrotron journal May 2010
The phase of the radio and X-ray pulses of PSR B1937+21 journal November 2003
The H-test probability distribution revisited: improved sensitivity journal July 2010
The annular gap model for γ-ray emission from young and millisecond pulsars: The annular gap model for γ-ray pulsars journal June 2010
Altitude-dependent polarization in radio pulsars journal December 2008
Relativistic Effects and Polarization in Three High‐Energy Pulsar Models journal May 2004
A millisecond pulsar in an eclipsing binary journal May 1988
Inference from Iterative Simulation Using Multiple Sequences journal November 1992
Markov Chain Monte Carlo in small worlds journal June 2006
High‐Energy Emission from Millisecond Pulsars journal March 2005
Monte Carlo sampling methods using Markov chains and their applications journal April 1970
A Radio Pulsar Spinning at 716 Hz journal March 2006
A 350-MHz GBT Survey of 50 Faint Fermi γ-ray Sources for Radio Millisecond Pulsars
  • Hessels, J. W. T.; Roberts, M. S. E.; McLaughlin, M. A.
  • RADIO PULSARS: AN ASTROPHYSICAL KEY TO UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3615072
conference January 2011
Polarization Sweeps in Rotation‐powered Pulsars journal January 2001
tempo2, a new pulsar-timing package - I. An overview: tempo2, a new pulsar-timing package - I. Overview journal May 2006
High-precision baseband timing of 15 millisecond pulsars journal July 2006
XMM-Newton observations of PSR B1957+20 journal January 2007
Calibration of the Rossi X‐Ray Timing Explorer Proportional Counter Array journal April 2006
Observations and Modeling of Gamma-ray Millisecond Pulsars seen with the Fermi LAT
  • Johnson, T. J.; Venter, C.; Harding, A. K.
  • RADIO PULSARS: AN ASTROPHYSICAL KEY TO UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE, AIP Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3615124
conference January 2011
The complex polarization angles of radio pulsars: orthogonal jumps and interstellar scattering journal January 2009
PuMa-II: A Wide Band Pulsar Machine for the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope
  • Karuppusamy, Ramesh; Stappers, Ben; van Straten, Willem
  • Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 120, Issue 864 https://doi.org/10.1086/528699
journal February 2008
High-precision timing of millisecond pulsars. 3: Long-term monitoring of PSRs B1855+09 and B1937+21 journal June 1994
Discovery of millisecond pulsars in radio searches of southern Fermi Large Area Telescope sources: Discovery of pulsars in Fermi LAT sources journal March 2011
Improving Sensitivity to weak Pulsations with Photon Probability Weighting journal April 2011
FERMI DISCOVERY OF GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER TERZAN 5 journal February 2010
High‐Resolution Spatial and Timing Observations of Millisecond Pulsar PSR J0218+4232 with Chandra journal October 2002
Simulated Tempering: A New Monte Carlo Scheme journal July 1992
The Likelihood Analysis of EGRET Data journal April 1996
Beppo SAX observation of PSR B1937+21 journal January 2004
DISCOVERY OF NEW GAMMA-RAY PULSARS WITH AGILE journal March 2009
THREE MILLISECOND PULSARS IN FERMI LAT UNASSOCIATED BRIGHT SOURCES journal December 2010
PRECISE γ-RAY TIMING AND RADIO OBSERVATIONS OF 17 FERMI γ-RAY PULSARS journal April 2011
Nonthermal High‐Energy Emission from Colliding Winds of Massive Stars journal June 2006
Gamma-ray pulsars: Emission zones and viewing geometries journal January 1995
Rossi X ‐ Ray Timing Explorer Absolute Timing Results for the Pulsars B1821−24 and B1509−58 journal July 1998
EIGHT γ-RAY PULSARS DISCOVERED IN BLIND FREQUENCY SEARCHES OF FERMI LAT DATA journal November 2010
Pulsar timing for the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope journal October 2008
Coherently Dedispersed Polarimetry of Millisecond Pulsars journal August 1999
An X-ray Nebula Associated with the Millisecond Pulsar B1957+20 journal February 2003
Polarimetry of millisecond pulsars journal October 1990
Evidence for a Massive Neutron star from a Radial-Velocity Study of the Companion to the Black-Widow Pulsar psr B1957+20 journal January 2011
PROBING MILLISECOND PULSAR EMISSION GEOMETRY USING LIGHT CURVES FROM THE FERMI /LARGE AREA TELESCOPE journal November 2009
Modeling Phase-Aligned Gamma-Ray and Radio Millisecond Pulsar Light Curves journal December 2011
Timing stability of millisecond pulsars and prospects for gravitational-wave detection journal December 2009
PuMa, a digital Pulsar Machine journal April 2002
An Atlas for Interpreting γ-Ray Pulsar Light Curves journal April 2009
XMM-Newton spectral and timing analysis of the faint millisecond pulsars PSR J0751+1807 and PSR J1012+5307 journal April 2004
Polarization observations of 20 millisecond pulsars: Polarization observations of 20 MSPs journal March 2011
Algorithm 778: L-BFGS-B: Fortran subroutines for large-scale bound-constrained optimization journal December 1997

Cited By (15)

A study of multifrequency polarization pulse profiles of millisecond pulsars journal April 2015
Pulsars and gravity journal April 2015
Observation of the Black Widow B1957+20 millisecond pulsar binary system with the MAGIC telescopes text January 2017
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
High-precision X-Ray Timing of Three Millisecond Pulsars with NICER : Stability Estimates and Comparison with Radio journal April 2019
Detection and Timing of Gamma-Ray Pulsations from the 707 Hz Pulsar J0952−0607 journal September 2019
X-ray studies of the black widow pulsar PSR B1957+20 journal August 2012
Observation of the black widow B1957+20 millisecond pulsar binary system with the MAGIC telescopes journal June 2017
Pulsars and Gravity journal January 2006
Detection and Timing of Gamma-Ray Pulsations from the 707 Hz Pulsar J0952-0607 other January 2019
X-ray studies of the Black Widow Pulsar PSR B1957+20 text January 2012
Optimized Blind Gamma-ray Pulsar Searches at Fixed Computing Budget text January 2014
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

Similar Records

PULSED GAMMA RAYS FROM THE ORIGINAL MILLISECOND AND BLACK WIDOW PULSARS: A CASE FOR CAUSTIC RADIO EMISSION?
Journal Article · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1356769
+18 more
MODELING PHASE-ALIGNED GAMMA-RAY AND RADIO MILLISECOND PULSAR LIGHT CURVES
Journal Article · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1356769
Modeling Phase-Aligned Gamma-Ray And Radio Millisecond Pulsar Light Curves
Journal Article · Mon Dec 12 00:00:00 EST 2011 · The Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1356769

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS