The Einstein@Home search for radio pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 discovery

The Einstein@Home search for radio pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 discovery

Einstein@Home aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 193 countries, to search for new neutron stars using data from electromagnetic and gravitational-wave detectors. This paper presents a detailed description of the search for newradio pulsars using PulsarALFAsurve...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Allen, B., Knispel, B., Cordes, J., Deneva, J., Hessels, J., Anderson, D., Aulbert, C., Bock, O., Brazier, A., Chatterjee, S., Demorest, P., Eggenstein, H., Fehrmann, H., Gotthelf, E., Hammer, D., Kaspi, V., Kramer, M., Lyne, A., Machenschalk, B., McLaughlin, M., Messenger, C., Pletsch, H., Ransom, S., Stairs, I., Bhat, Ramesh, Stappers, B., Bogdanova, S., Camilo, F., Champion, D., Crawford, F., Desvignes, G., Freire, P., Heald, G., Jenet, F., Lazarus, P., Lee, K., van Leeuwen, J., Lynch, R., Papa, M., Prix, R., Rosen, R., Scholz, P., Siemens, X., Stovall, K., Venkataraman, A., Zhu, W.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Institute of Physics Publishing, Inc. 2013
Subjects:
(PSR J2007+2722) – surveys
gravitational waves
pulsars: general
methods: data analysis
pulsars: individual
binaries: close
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/49756
Description
Summary:Einstein@Home aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 193 countries, to search for new neutron stars using data from electromagnetic and gravitational-wave detectors. This paper presents a detailed description of the search for newradio pulsars using PulsarALFAsurvey data from the Arecibo Observatory. The enormous computing power allows this search to cover a new region of parameter space; it can detect pulsars in binary systems with orbital periods as short as 11 minutes. We also describe the first Einstein@Home discovery, the 40.8 Hz isolated pulsar PSR J2007+2722, and provide a full timing model. PSR J2007+2722’s pulse profile is remarkably wide with emission over almost the entire spin period. This neutron star is most likely a disrupted recycled pulsar, about as old as its characteristic spin-down age of 404 Myr. However, there is a small chance that it was born recently, with a low magnetic field. If so, upper limits on the X-ray flux suggest but cannot prove that PSR J2007+2722 is at least ~100 kyr old. In the future, we expect that the massive computing power provided by volunteers should enable many additional radio pulsar discoveries.

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