Journal Article

Fast Discovery of an Extremely Radio-Faint Millisecond Pulsar from the Fermi-Lat Unassociated Source 3fgl J0318.1+0252

Zhang, Hui, Clark, Colin J., Zhang, Chengmin, Ferrara, Elizabeth C, Zhi, Qijun, Qian, Lei, Pan, Zhichen, Thompson, David J, Yu, Xuhong, Yan, Jun, Wang, Na, You, Shanping, Yao, Jumei, Shen, Zhiqiang, Zhu, Weiwei, Parkinson, Pablo M. Saz, Liu, Zhijie, Smith, David A., Michelson, Peter F., Kerr, Matthew, Fan, Kwok Lung, Li, Di, Yue, Youling, Hou, Xian, Xie, Xiaoyao, Wang, Pei, Ray, Paul S.

2021

Overview

High sensitivity radio searches of unassociated γ-ray sources have proven to be an effective way of finding new pulsars. Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) during its commissioning phase, we have carried out a number of targeted deep searches of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) γ-ray sources. On February 27, 2018 we discovered an isolated millisecond pulsar (MSP), PSR J0318+0253, coincident with the unassociated γ-ray source 3FGL J0318.1+0252. PSR J0318+0253 has a spin period of 5.19 ms, a dispersion measure (DM) of 26 pc cm−3 corresponding to a DM distance of about 1.3 kpc, and a period-averaged flux density of (∼11±2) µJy at L-band (1.05–1.45 GHz). Among all high energy MSPs, PSR J0318+0253 is the faintest ever detected in radio bands, by a factor of at least ∼4 in terms of L-band fluxes. With the aid of the radio ephemeris, an analysis of 9.6 years of Fermi-LAT data revealed that PSR J0318+0253 also displays strong γ-ray pulsations. Follow-up observations carried out by both Arecibo and FAST suggest a likely spectral turn-over around 350 MHz. This is the first result from the collaboration between FAST and the Fermi-LAT teams as well as the first confirmed new MSP discovery by FAST, raising hopes for the detection of many more MSPs. Such discoveries will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the neutron star zoo while potentially contributing to the future detection of gravitational waves, via pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments.

• Publisher: Science China Press,Springer,Springer Nature B.V,Science China Press and Springer
• Subject: Analysis / Astronomy / Astrophysics / Classical and Continuum Physics / FAST / Flux density / Gamma ray sources / Gamma rays / Gravitational waves / Millisecond pulsars / Neutron stars / Neutrons / Observations and Techniques / Physics / Physics and Astronomy / pulsar / radio / Radio telescopes / Searching / Telescope / Ultrahigh frequencies