The SUrvey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts - IV. Discovery and polarimetry of a 12.1-s radio pulsar
The SUrvey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts - IV. Discovery and polarimetry of a 12.1-s radio pulsar
We report the discovery of PSR J2251-3711, a radio pulsar with a spin period of 12.1 s, the second longest currently known. Its timing parameters imply a characteristic age of 15 Myr, a surface magnetic field of 1.3 × 1013 G, and a spin-down luminosity of 2.9 × 1029 erg s-1. Its dispersion measure of 12.12(1) pc cm-3 leads to distance estimates of 0.5 and 1.3 kpc according to the NE2001 and YMW16 Galactic free electron density models, respectively. Some of its single pulses show an uninterrupted 180-deg sweep of the phase-resolved polarization position angle, with an S-shape reminiscent of the rotating vector model prediction. However, the fact that this sweep occurs at different phases from one pulse to another is remarkable and without straightforward explanation. Although PSR J2251-3711 lies in the region of the P - P parameter space occupied by the X-ray isolated neutron stars (XINS), there is no evidence for an X-ray counterpart in our Swift XRT observation; this places a 99 per cent-confidence upper bound on its unabsorbed bolometric thermal luminosity of 1.1 × 1031 (d/1 kpc)2 erg s-1 for an assumed temperature of 85 eV, where d is the distance to the pulsar. Further observations are needed to determine whether it is a rotation-powered pulsar with a true age of at least several Myr, or a much younger object such as an XINS or a recently cooled magnetar. Extreme specimens like PSR J2251-3711 help bridge populations in the so-called neutron star zoo in an attempt to understand their origins and evolution.
Pulsars: general, Pulsars: individual: PSR J2251-3711, Stars: neutron
1165-1177
Morello, Vincent
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Keane, Evan F.
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Enoto, Teruaki
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Guillot, Sebastien
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Ho, Wynn C.G.
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Jameson, A.
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Kramer, M.
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Stappers, B.W.
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Bailes, M.
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Barr, E.D.
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Bhandari, S.
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Caleb, Manisha
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Flynn, C.M.L.
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Jankowski, F.
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Johnston, Simon
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van Straten, W.
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Arzoumanian, Zaven
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Bogdanov, Slavko
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Gendreau, Keith C.
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Malacaria, Christian
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Ray, Paul S.
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Remillard, Ronald A.
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1 March 2020
Morello, Vincent
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Keane, Evan F.
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Enoto, Teruaki
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Guillot, Sebastien
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Ho, Wynn C.G.
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Jameson, A.
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Kramer, M.
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Stappers, B.W.
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Bailes, M.
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Barr, E.D.
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Bhandari, S.
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Caleb, Manisha
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Flynn, C.M.L.
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Jankowski, F.
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Johnston, Simon
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van Straten, W.
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Arzoumanian, Zaven
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Bogdanov, Slavko
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Gendreau, Keith C.
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Malacaria, Christian
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Ray, Paul S.
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Remillard, Ronald A.
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Morello, Vincent, Keane, Evan F., Enoto, Teruaki, Guillot, Sebastien, Ho, Wynn C.G., Jameson, A., Kramer, M., Stappers, B.W., Bailes, M., Barr, E.D., Bhandari, S., Caleb, Manisha, Flynn, C.M.L., Jankowski, F., Johnston, Simon, van Straten, W., Arzoumanian, Zaven, Bogdanov, Slavko, Gendreau, Keith C., Malacaria, Christian, Ray, Paul S. and Remillard, Ronald A.
(2020)
The SUrvey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts - IV. Discovery and polarimetry of a 12.1-s radio pulsar.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 493 (1), .
(doi:10.1093/mnras/staa321).
Abstract
We report the discovery of PSR J2251-3711, a radio pulsar with a spin period of 12.1 s, the second longest currently known. Its timing parameters imply a characteristic age of 15 Myr, a surface magnetic field of 1.3 × 1013 G, and a spin-down luminosity of 2.9 × 1029 erg s-1. Its dispersion measure of 12.12(1) pc cm-3 leads to distance estimates of 0.5 and 1.3 kpc according to the NE2001 and YMW16 Galactic free electron density models, respectively. Some of its single pulses show an uninterrupted 180-deg sweep of the phase-resolved polarization position angle, with an S-shape reminiscent of the rotating vector model prediction. However, the fact that this sweep occurs at different phases from one pulse to another is remarkable and without straightforward explanation. Although PSR J2251-3711 lies in the region of the P - P parameter space occupied by the X-ray isolated neutron stars (XINS), there is no evidence for an X-ray counterpart in our Swift XRT observation; this places a 99 per cent-confidence upper bound on its unabsorbed bolometric thermal luminosity of 1.1 × 1031 (d/1 kpc)2 erg s-1 for an assumed temperature of 85 eV, where d is the distance to the pulsar. Further observations are needed to determine whether it is a rotation-powered pulsar with a true age of at least several Myr, or a much younger object such as an XINS or a recently cooled magnetar. Extreme specimens like PSR J2251-3711 help bridge populations in the so-called neutron star zoo in an attempt to understand their origins and evolution.
Text
1910.04124
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 27 January 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 5 February 2020
Published date: 1 March 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
VM, BWS, MC, and FJ acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 694745). SG acknowledges the support of the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES). The Parkes Observatory is part of the Australia Telescope which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This research is supported by the Australian Research Council through grants FL150100148 and CE170100004. Some of this work was performed on the OzSTAR national facility at Swinburne University of Technology. OzSTAR is funded by Swinburne University of Technology and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission and portions of the NICER science team activities are funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). VM thanks Kostas Gourgouliatos, Sergei Popov, and Aris Karastergiou for useful discussions, and the organizers of the PHAROS conference ‘the multimessenger physics and astrophysics of neutron stars’ for enabling these discussions in the first place. We also thank Christina Ilie and Patrick Weltevrede for their valuable guidance on single pulse analysis and useful discussions on the single pulse polarization behaviour of PSR J2251−3711. Finally, we thank the anonymous referee for providing valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s).
Keywords:
Pulsars: general, Pulsars: individual: PSR J2251-3711, Stars: neutron
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 437858
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/437858
ISSN: 1365-2966
PURE UUID: 15066c5a-a302-44f5-b3bb-f7685342ea29
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Date deposited: 20 Feb 2020 17:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 06:22
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Contributors
Author:
Vincent Morello
Author:
Evan F. Keane
Author:
Teruaki Enoto
Author:
Sebastien Guillot
Author:
A. Jameson
Author:
M. Kramer
Author:
B.W. Stappers
Author:
M. Bailes
Author:
E.D. Barr
Author:
S. Bhandari
Author:
Manisha Caleb
Author:
C.M.L. Flynn
Author:
F. Jankowski
Author:
Simon Johnston
Author:
W. van Straten
Author:
Zaven Arzoumanian
Author:
Slavko Bogdanov
Author:
Keith C. Gendreau
Author:
Christian Malacaria
Author:
Paul S. Ray
Author:
Ronald A. Remillard
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