Einstein@Home discovers a radio-quiet gamma-ray millisecond pulsar
Colin J. Clark, Holger J. Pletsch, Jason Wu, Lucas Guillemot, Matthew Kerr, Tyrel J. Johnson, Fernando Camilo, David Salvetti, Bruce Allen, David Anderson, Carsten Aulbert, Christian Beer, Oliver Bock, Andres Cuéllar, Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein, Henning Fehrmann, Michael Kramer, Shawn A. Kwang, Bernd Machenschalk, Lars Nieder, Markus Ackermann, Marco Ajello, Luca Baldini, Jean Ballet, Guido Barbiellini, Denis Bastieri, Ronaldo Bellazzini, Elisabetta Bissaldi, Roger D. Blandford, Elliott D. Bloom, Raffaella Bonino, Eugenio Bottacini, Terri J. Brandt, Johan Bregeon, Philippe Bruel, Rolf Buehler, Toby H. Burnett, Sara Buson, Rob A. Cameron, Regina Caputo, Patrizia A. Caraveo, Elisabetta Cavazzuti , Claudia Cecchi, Eric Charles, Alexandre Chekhtman, Stefano Ciprini, Lynn R. Cominsky, Denise Costantin, Sara Cutini, Filippo D’Ammando, Andrea De Luca, Rachele Desiante, Leonardo Di Venere, Mattia Di Mauro, Niccolò Di Lalla, Seth W. Digel, Cecilia Favuzzi, Elizabeth C. Ferrara, Anna Franckowiak, Yasushi Fukazawa, Stefan Funk, Piergiorgio Fusco, Fabio Gargano, Dario Gasparrini, Nico Giglietto, Francesco Giordano, Marcello Giroletti, Germán A. Gomez-Vargas, David Green, Isabelle A. Grenier, Sylvain Guiriec, Alice K. Harding, John W. Hewitt, Deirdre Horan, Guðlaugur Jóhannesson, Shiki Kensei, Michael Kuss, Giovanni La Mura, Stefan Larsson, Luca Latronico, Jian Li, Francesco Longo, Francesco Loparco, Michael N. Lovellette, Pasquale Lubrano, Jeffrey D. Magill, Simone Maldera, Alberto Manfreda, Mario N. Mazziotta, Julie E. McEnery, Peter F. Michelson, Nestor Mirabal, Warit Mitthumsiri, Tsunefumi Mizuno, Maria Elena Monzani, Aldo Morselli, Igor V. Moskalenko, Eric Nuss, Takashi Ohsugi, Nicola Omodei, Monica Orienti, Elena Orlando, Michele Palatiello, Vaidehi S. Paliya, Francesco de Palma, David Paneque, Jeremy S. Perkins, Massimo Persic, Melissa Pesce-Rollins, Troy A. Porter, Giacomo Principe, Silvia Rainò, Riccardo Rando, Paul S. Ray, Massimiliano Razzano, Anita Reimer, Olaf Reimer, Roger W. Romani, Pablo M. Saz Parkinson, Carmelo Sgrò, Eric J. Siskind, David A. Smith, Francesca Spada, Gloria Spandre, Paolo Spinelli, Jana B. Thayer, David J. Thompson, Diego F. Torres, Eleonora Troja, Giacomo Vianello, Kent Wood, Matthew Wood
Feb - 2018
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao7228

journal : Science Advances

Volume : 4 ; Issue : 2
type: Article Journal

Abstract
Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are old neutron stars that spin hundreds of times per second and appear to pulsate as their emission beams cross our line of sight. To date, radio pulsations have been detected from all rotation-powered MSPs. In an attempt to discover radio-quiet gamma-ray MSPs, we used the aggregated power from the computers of tens of thousands of volunteers participating in the Einstein@Home distributed computing project to search for pulsations from unidentified gamma-ray sources in Fermi Large Area Telescope data. This survey discovered two isolated MSPs, one of which is the only known rotation-powered MSP to remain undetected in radio observations. These gamma-ray MSPs were discovered in completely blind searches without prior constraints from other observations, raising hopes for detecting MSPs from a predicted Galactic bulge population.

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