A direct measurement of sense of rotation of PSR J0737$-$3039A

Abstract

We apply the algorithm published by Liang et al. (2014) to describe the Double Pulsar system J0737$-$3039 and extract the sense of rotation of first born recycled pulsar PSR J0737$-$3039A. We find that this pulsar is rotating prograde in its orbit. This is the first direct measurement of the sense of rotation of a pulsar with respect to its orbit and a direct confirmation of the rotating lighthouse model for pulsars. This result confirms that the spin angular momentum vector is closely aligned with the orbital angular momentum, suggesting that kick of the supernova producing the second born pulsar J0737$-$3039B was small.

Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• Tests of general relativity from timing the double pulsar
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems
• The Formation of the Double Pulsar PSR J0737-3039A/B
• On the Formation and Progenitor of PSR J0737-3039: New Constraints on the Supernova Explosion Forming Pulsar B

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• Understanding and improving the timing of PSR J0737-3039B
• Measuring the Lense-Thirring Orbital Precession and the Neutron Star Moment of Inertia with Pulsars
• Prospects of constraining the dense matter equation of state from the timing analysis of pulsars in double neutron star binaries: the cases of PSR J0737-3039A and PSR J1757-1854
• Magnetic-field oscillation model of pulsar radio emission: prediction of an observable effect