Arecibo PALFA survey and Einstein@Home: Binary pulsar discovery by volunteer computing

Arecibo PALFA survey and Einstein@Home: Binary pulsar discovery by volunteer computing

We report the discovery of the 20.7ms binary pulsar J1952+2630, made using the distributed computing project Einstein@Home in Pulsar ALFA survey observations with the Arecibo telescope. Follow-up observations with the Arecibo telescope confirm the binary nature of the system. We obtain a circular or...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Knispel, B., Lazarus, P., Allen, B., Anderson, D., Aulbert, C., Bhat, Ramesh, Bock, O., Bogdanov, S., Brazier, A., Camilo, F., Chatterjee, S., Cordes, J., Crawford, F., Deneva, J., Desvignes, G., Fehrmann, H., Freire, P., Hammer, D., Hessels, J., Jenet, F., Kaspi, V., Kramer, M., Van Leeuwen, J., Lorimer, D., Lyne, A., MacHenschalk, B., McLaughlin, M., Messenger, C., Nice, D., Papa, M., Pletsch, H., Prix, R., Ransom, S., Siemens, X., Stairs, I., Stappers, B., Stovall, K., Venkataraman, A.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Institute of Physics Publishing 2011
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/55710
Description
Summary:We report the discovery of the 20.7ms binary pulsar J1952+2630, made using the distributed computing project Einstein@Home in Pulsar ALFA survey observations with the Arecibo telescope. Follow-up observations with the Arecibo telescope confirm the binary nature of the system. We obtain a circular orbital solution with an orbital period of 9.4hr, a projected orbital radius of 2.8lt-s, and a mass function of f = 0.15 M ? by analysis of spin period measurements. No evidence of orbital eccentricity is apparent; we set a 2s upper limit e ? 1.7 × 10 -3 . The orbital parameters suggest a massive white dwarf companion with a minimum mass of 0.95 M ? , assuming a pulsar mass of 1.4 M ? . Most likely, this pulsar belongs to the rare class of intermediate-mass binary pulsars. Future timing observations will aim to determine the parameters of this system further, measure relativistic effects, and elucidate the nature of the companion star. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

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