A Massive-born Neutron Star with a Massive White Dwarf Companion

Abstract

We report on the results of a 4-year timing campaign of PSR~J2222$-0137$, a 2.44-day binary pulsar with a massive white dwarf (WD) companion, with the Nançay, Effelsberg and Lovell radio telescopes. Using the Shapiro delay for this system, we find a pulsar mass $m_p=1.76,\pm 0.06,M_{\odot }$ and a WD mass $m_c=1.293\pm 0.025M_{\odot }$. We also measure the rate of advance of periastron for this system, which is marginally consistent with the GR prediction for these masses. The short lifetime of the massive WD progenitor star led to a rapid X-ray binary phase with little ($<10^{-2}{M}_{\odot }$) mass accretion onto the neutron star (NS); hence, the current pulsar mass is, within uncertainties, its birth mass; the largest measured to date. We discuss the discrepancy with previous mass measurements for this system; we conclude that the measurements presented here are likely to be more accurate. Finally, we highlight the usefulness of this system for testing alternative theories of gravity by tightly constraining the presence of dipolar radiation. This is of particular importance for certain aspects of strong-field gravity, like spontaneous scalarization, since the mass of PSR~J2222$-0137$ puts that system into a poorly tested parameter range.

17 pages in journal format, 3 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Some references fixed and updated

References in corpus (16)

• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• Masses, Radii, and Equation of State of Neutron Stars
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Pre-Supernova Evolution of Massive Single and Binary Stars
• An Ultraluminous X-ray Source Powered by An Accreting Neutron Star
• Tempo2, a new pulsar timing package. II: The timing model and precision estimates
• The relativistic pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1738+0333 II. The most stringent test of scalar-tensor gravity
• The Landscape of the Neutrino Mechanism of Core-Collapse Supernovae: Neutron Star and Black Hole Mass Functions, Explosion Energies and Nickel Yields
• Formation of millisecond pulsars with CO white dwarf companions - II. Accretion, spin-up, true ages and comparison to MSPs with He white dwarf companions
• The relativistic pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1738+0333 I. Mass determination and evolutionary history
• Measuring pulse times of arrival from broadband pulsar observations
• A Massive Millisecond Pulsar in an Eccentric Binary
• A 1.05 $M_{\odot }$ Companion to PSR J2222-0137: The Coolest Known White Dwarf?
• Microarcsecond VLBI pulsar astrometry with PSRPI I. Two binary millisecond pulsars with white dwarf companions

Cited by in corpus (35)

• GW190425: Observation of a Compact Binary Coalescence with Total Mass $\sim 3.4M_{\odot }$
• Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar
• Evidence for a maximum mass cut-off in the neutron star mass distribution and constraints on the equation of state
• The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Survey overview and initial pulsar discoveries
• An improved test of the strong equivalence principle with the pulsar in a triple star system
• Closing a spontaneous-scalarization window with binary pulsars
• PSR J2222--0137. I. Improved physical parameters for the system
• Maximum mass cutoff in the neutron star mass distribution and the prospect of forming supramassive objects in the double neutron star mergers
• PSR J2234+0611: A new laboratory for stellar evolution
• Binary Pulsar constraints on massless scalar-tensor theories using Bayesian statistics
• The Relativistic Binary Programme on MeerKAT: Science objectives and first results
• A measurement of the Galactic plane mass density from binary pulsar accelerations
• Constraining scalar-tensor theories by neutron star-balck hole gravitational wave events
• A revisit of PSR J1909$-$3744 with 15-year high-precision timing
• New Graviton Mass Bound from Binary Pulsars
• Reduced-order surrogate models for scalar-tensor gravity in the strong field and applications to binary pulsars and GW170817
• NICER Detection of Thermal X-ray Pulsations from the Massive Millisecond Pulsars PSR J0740+6620 and PSR J1614-2230
• Milky Way Accelerometry via Millisecond Pulsar Timing
• Mass measurements for two binary pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey
• Searches for Shapiro delay in seven binary pulsars using the MeerKAT telescope
• Timing of PSR J2055+3829, an eclipsing black widow pulsar discovered with the Nançay Radio Telescope
• Bounding the mass of graviton in a dynamic regime with binary pulsars
• Constraining scalarization in scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity through binary pulsars
• Searching For Stochastic Gravitational Waves Below a Nanohertz
• A precise mass measurement of PSR J2045+3633
• Extended reduced-order surrogate models for scalar-tensor gravity in the strong field and applications to binary pulsars and gravitational waves
• The maximum accreted mass of recycled pulsars
• Improving pulsar polarization and timing measurements with the Nançay Radio Telescope
• Using Pulsar Parameter Drifts to Detect Sub-Nanohertz Gravitational Waves
• Improved binary pulsar constraints on the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework
• Relativistic effects in a mildly recycled pulsar binary: PSR J1952+2630
• Stringent Tests of Gravity with Highly Relativistic Binary Pulsars in the Era of LISA and SKA
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey: VII. Six millisecond pulsars in compact orbits with massive white dwarf companions
• Possible tidal dissipation in millisecond pulsar binaries
• Radio timing constraints on the mass of the binary pulsar PSR J1528-3146