Ruling out Kozai resonance in highly eccentric galactic binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1903+0327

Abstract

We investigate the observational signatures associated with one of the proposed formation scenario for the recently discovered highly eccentric binary millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR J1903+0327 in the galactic plane. The scenario requires that the MSP to be part of a hierarchical triple (HT), consisting of inner and outer binaries, experiencing the Kozai resonance. Numerical modeling of a bound point mass HT, while incorporating the effects due to the quadrupolar interactions between the binary orbits and dominant contributions to the general relativistic periastron precession in the inner binary, reveals that, at the present epoch, the orbital eccentricity of the binary MSP should decrease for reasonable ranges in the HT parameters. The estimated decrements in the orbital eccentricity of the inner binary are few parts in $10^5$, substantially higher than the reported accuracies in the estimation of the orbital eccentricity of the binary MSP, while employing various general relativistic timing models for isolated binary pulsars. For wide ranges in the allowed orbital parameters, the estimated rate of change in the eccentricity of the inner binary is orders of magnitude higher than the value recently measured by the pulsar timing analysis. Therefore, we rule out the scenario that the MSP is part of a HT undergoing the Kozai oscillations. The origin of this system in a typical globular cluster is also shown to be less likely than inferred in the discovery paper.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters. Minor typos corrected in the second version

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• On the nature and evolution of the unique binary pulsar J1903+0327
• The formation of the eccentric-orbit millisecond pulsar J1903+0327 and the origin of single millisecond pulsars
• PSR J1903+0327 : A Unique Milli-Second Pulsar with a Main-Sequence Companion Star
• Implications of the measured parameters of PSR J1903+0327 for its progenitor neutron star
• Post-Newtonian Kozai-Lidov Mechanism and its Effect on Cumulative Shift of Periastron Time of Binary Pulsar
• Cumulative Shift of Periastron Time of Binary Pulsar with Kozai-Lidov Oscillation