Upgraded GMRT survey for pulsars in globular clusters

Abstract

Context. Globular clusters (GCs) contain a unique pulsar population, with many exotic systems that can form only in their dense stellar environments. Such systems are potentially very interesting for new tests of gravity theories and neutron-star mass measurements. Aims. The leap in sensitivity of the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) in India, especially at low radio frequencies (< 1 GHz), motivated a new search for radio pulsars in a group of eight southern GCs. We aim to image these clusters in order to have independent measurements of the radio fluxes of known pulsars and the identification of bright radio sources that could be pulsars missed by pulsation search pipelines due to their inherent limitations. Methods. The observations were conducted at 650 MHz (Band 4 receivers) on Terzan 5, NGC 6441, NGC 6440, and NGC 6544, and at 400 MHz (Band 3 receivers) on NGC 6652, NGC 6539, NGC 1851, and M 30. Segmented acceleration and jerk searches were performed on the data. Simultaneously, we obtained interferometric data on these clusters, which were later converted into radio images.Results. We discovered PSR J1835−3259B, a 1.83-ms pulsar in NGC 6652; this is in a near-circular wide orbit of 28.7-hr with an unidentified low-mass (∼ 0.2) companion, likely a helium white dwarf. We derived a ten-year timing solution for this system. We also present measurements of scattering, flux densities, and spectral indices for some of the previously known pulsars in these GCs. Conclusions. A significant fraction of the pulsars in these clusters have steep spectral indices. Additionally, we detected eight radio point sources not associated with any known pulsar positions in the radio images. There are four newly identified sources, three in NGC 6652 and one in NGC 6539, as well as one previously identified source in NGC 1851, NGC 6440, NGC 6544, and Terzan 5. Surprisingly, our images show that our newly discovered pulsar, PSR J1835−3259B, is the brightest pulsar in all GCs we have imaged; like other pulsars with broad profiles (Terzan 5 C and O), its flux density in the radio images is much larger than in its pulsations. This indicates that their pulsed emission is only a fraction of their total emission. The detection of radio sources outside the core radii but well within the tidal radii of these clusters show that future GC surveys should complement the search analysis by using the imaging capability of interferometers, and preferentially synthesise large number of search beams in order to obtain a larger field of view.

Discovery of γ-Ray Pulsations from PSR J1835–3259B in the Globular Cluster NGC 6652

“…The great similarity of the γ-ray pulse profile to the radio one also strongly supports our detection. This pulsar has a maximum spin-down rate  P of 6.65 × 10 −20 (Gautam et al 2022), which implies a spin-down luminosity of   E 4.3 10 35 ´erg s −1 . The γ-ray efficiency would be   L E 0.12 h = g when we assign the observed L γ to the MSP.…”

“…While the former two have higher spin-down luminosities of ∼10 36 erg s −1 , these three all have relatively high rotational power among all MSPs. Also the former two are isolated pulsars, but PSR J1835−3259B is in a binary, likely with a helium white dwarf companion (Gautam et al 2022), and on the evolutionary tracks for such binaries (Tauris & Savonije 1999). Further studies of pulsars in the GCs could help our understanding, by pinning down how many such bright MSPs exist in γ-ray-bright GCs.…”

“…We selected the events within an aperture radius of 6°(the 68% containment angle at 0.1 GeV 5 ) in the 0.1-500 GeV band, and assigned weights to them with their probabilities of originating from the target (using the Fermi tool gtsrcprob). Pulse phases were assigned to the weighted photons based on the given ephemeris (Gautam et al 2022) by employing Tempo2 (Hobbs et al 2006) with the Fermi plug-in (Ray et al 2011). The two-dimensional phaseogram and folded pulse profile in 16 phase bins are plotted in Figures 2(B) and (A) respectively, where the uncertainties of the counts in each bin were estimated using the method provided in Abdo et al (2013).…”

“…Recently, Gautam et al (2022) reported the discovery of a 1.83 ms MSP, PSR J1835−3259B, in a near-circular orbit of 28.7 hr within the GC NGC 6652. This MSP is the second one found in this GC; the first is PSR J1835−3259A, which has a spin period of 3.89 ms and is in a wide binary with orbital period 9.25 days (DeCesar et al 2015).…”

“…Based on its γ-ray spectrum and using a source distance of 10 kpc (Harris 1996), Wu et al (2022) estimated that this GC contains 1-7 MSPs. Motivated by these results and given the detailed ephemeris for PSR J1835−3259B provided in Gautam et al (2022), we carried out timing analysis of the Fermi-LAT data for NGC 6652. We have been able to detect γ-ray pulsations from PSR J1835−3259B.…”