LOFAR discovery of a 23.5-second radio pulsar

Abstract

We present the discovery of PSR J0250+5854, a radio pulsar with a spin period of 23.5 s. This is the slowest-spinning radio pulsar known. PSR J0250+5854 was discovered by the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS), an all-Northern-sky survey for pulsars and fast transients at a central observing frequency of 135 MHz. We subsequently detected pulsations from the pulsar in the interferometric images of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey, allowing for sub-arcsecond localization. This, along with a pre-discovery detection 2 years prior, allowed us to measure the spin-period derivative to be $\dot{P}=2.7\times 10^{-14}$ s s${}^{-1}$. The observed spin period derivative of PSR J0250+5854 indicates a surface magnetic field strength, characteristic age and spin-down luminosity of $2.6\times 10^{13}$G, $13.7$ Myr and $8.2\times 10^{28}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ respectively, for a dipolar magnetic field configuration. This also places the pulsar beyond the conventional pulsar death line, where radio emission is expected to cease. The spin period of PSR J0250+5854 is similar to those of the high-energy-emitting magnetars and X-ray dim isolated neutron stars (XDINSs). However, the pulsar was not detected by the Swift/XRT in the energy band of 0.3-10 keV, placing a bolometric luminosity limit of $1.5\times 10^{32}$ erg s${}^{-1}$ for an assumed $N_{\mathrm{H}}=1.35\times 10^{21}$ cm${}^{-2}$ and a temperature of 85 eV (typical of XDINSs). We discuss the implications of the discovery for models of the pulsar death line as well as the prospect of finding more similarly long-period pulsars, including the advantages provided by LOTAAS for this.

arXiv comment16 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (68)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Measuring Reddening with SDSS Stellar Spectra and Recalibrating SFD
• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray
• The Swift X-ray Telescope
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Magnetars
• A Radio Pulsar Spinning at 716 Hz
• Time-dependent force-free pulsar magnetospheres: axisymmetric and oblique rotators
• The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey - I. Survey Description and Preliminary Data Release
• Tempo2, a new pulsar timing package. II: The timing model and precision estimates
• Transient radio bursts from rotating neutron stars
• DSPSR: Digital Signal Processing Software for Pulsar Astronomy
• Second ROSAT all-sky survey (2RXS) source catalogue
• Transient pulsed radio emission from a magnetar
• Unifying the observational diversity of isolated neutron stars via magneto-thermal evolution models
• Fourier Techniques for Very Long Astrophysical Time Series Analysis
• The characteristics of millisecond pulsar emission: I. Spectra, pulse shapes and the beaming fraction
• The Magnificent Seven: Magnetic fields and surface temperature distributions
• 1E 1547.0-5408: a radio-emitting magnetar with a rotation period of 2 seconds
• LOFAR facet calibration
• LOFAR 150-MHz observations of the Boötes field: Catalogue and Source Counts
• Faceting for direction-dependent spectral deconvolution
• Observing pulsars and fast transients with LOFAR
• Radio interferometric gain calibration as a complex optimization problem
• A Radio-loud Magnetar in X-ray Quiescence
• Particle Acceleration Zones Above Pulsar Polar Caps: Electron and Positron Pair Formation Fronts
• The pulsar spectral index distribution
• The Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey - I: Survey Description, Data Analysis, and Initial Results
• Radio Pulsar Death Line Revisited: Is PSR J2144-3933 Anomalous?
• RRATs: New Discoveries, Timing Solutions & Musings
• Eight gamma-ray pulsars discovered in blind frequency searches of Fermi LAT data
• Radio Quiet Pulsars with Ultra-Strong Magnetic Fields
• Photon Splitting and Pair Creation in Highly Magnetized Pulsars
• Toward An Empirical Theory of Pulsar Emission. VII. On the Spectral Behavior of Conal Beam Radii and Emission Heights
• A LOFAR census of non-recycled pulsars: average profiles, dispersion measures, flux densities, and spectra
• The Correlation between Dispersion Measure and X-ray Column Density from Radio Pulsars
• Pulsar braking and the P-Pdot diagram
• Radio properties of the magnetar near Sagittarius A* from observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array
• A LOFAR census of millisecond pulsars
• Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA. IV. Mock Spectrometer Data Analysis, Survey Sensitivity, and the Discovery of 41 Pulsars
• Further Searches for RRATs in the Parkes Multi-Beam Pulsar Survey
• Wide-band Simultaneous Observations of Pulsars: Disentangling Dispersion Measure and Profile Variations
• A Magnetar-like Outburst from a High-B Radio Pulsar
• The LOFAR Pilot Surveys for Pulsars and Fast Radio Transients
• LEAP: the large European array for pulsars
• Magnetar-like activity from the central compact object in the SNR RCW103
• Discovery and Follow-up of Rotating Radio Transients with the Green Bank and LOFAR Telescopes
• Investigation of the bi-drifting subpulses of radio pulsar B1839-04 utilising the open-source data-analysis project PSRSALSA
• New Limits on Radio Emission from X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars
• Scattering analysis of LOFAR pulsar observations
• Radio efficiency of pulsars
• Vacuum gaps in pulsars and PSR J2144-3933
• The Nearby Neutron Star RX J0720.4-3125 from Radio to X-rays
• Magnetar-like X-ray Bursts from a Rotation Powered Pulsar, PSR J1119-6127
• Pulsar Pair Cascades in a Distorted Magnetic Dipole Field
• New Discoveries from the Arecibo 327 MHz Drift Pulsar Survey Radio Transient Search
• Single-pulse classifier for the LOFAR Tied-Array All-sky Survey
• Finding pulsars with LOFAR
• On the origin of the bi-drifting subpulse phenomenon in pulsars
• An investigation of pulsar searching techniques with the Fast Folding Algorithm
• The implementation of a Fast-Folding pipeline for long-period pulsar searching in the PALFA survey
• Dependence of pulsar death line on the equation of state
• A Framework for Assessing the Performance of Pulsar Search Pipelines
• Radio Observations of Two Isolated Neutron Stars, RXJ0720.4-3125 and RX J0806.4-4132
• X-ray and optical observations of the closest isolated radio pulsar

Cited by in corpus (61)

• The LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey -- V. Second data release
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: I. Project design and pulsar discoveries
• Discovery of a radio emitting neutron star with an ultra-long spin period of 76 seconds
• Detecting Axion Dark Matter with Radio Lines from Neutron Star Populations
• Low-frequency Faraday rotation measures towards pulsars using LOFAR: probing the 3-D Galactic halo magnetic field
• The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Survey overview and initial pulsar discoveries
• Optimal periodicity searching: Revisiting the Fast Folding Algorithm for large-scale pulsar surveys
• The Fast Radio Burst Luminosity Function and Death Line in the Low-Twist Magnetar Model
• Evidence for an abundant old population of Galactic ultra long period magnetars and implications for fast radio bursts
• Long-period Pulsars as Possible Outcomes of Supernova Fallback Accretion
• Quasi-periodic sub-pulse structure as a unifying feature for radio-emitting neutron stars
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT -- VIII. The subpulse modulation of 1198 pulsars
• V-LoTSS: The Circularly-Polarised LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey
• Crust structure and thermal evolution of neutron stars in soft X-ray transients
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts IV: Discovery and polarimetry of a 12.1-second radio pulsar
• A Single spark model for PSR J2144$-$3933
• Constraining the nature of the 18-min periodic radio transient GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3 via multi-wavelength observations and magneto-thermal simulations
• Orthogonal pulsars as a key test for pulsar evolution
• Radio Pulsar Sub-Populations (I) : The Curious Case of Nulling Pulsars
• Orbital Evolution of Neutron-Star -- White-Dwarf Binaries by Roche-Lobe Overflow and Gravitational Wave Radiation
• Searching for pulsars associated with polarised point sources using LOFAR: Initial discoveries from the TULIPP project
• Modelling spin evolution of magnetars
• LOFAR early-time search for coherent radio emission from GRB 180706A
• Rotating vector model for magnetars
• CHIME/FRB/Pulsar discovery of a nearby long period radio transient with a timing glitch
• Discovery of a steep-spectrum low-luminosity pulsar with the Murchison Widefield Array
• XMM-Newton observations of PSR J0726-2612, a radio-loud XDINS
• Discussions on the nature of GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3
• Rotational Evolution of The Slowest Radio Pulsar PSR J0250+5854
• Polarization studies of Rotating Radio Transients
• The CRAFT Coherent (CRACO) upgrade I: System Description and Results of the 110-ms Radio Transient Pilot Survey
• Ultraslow PSR J0901-4046 with an ultrahigh magnetic field of $3.2\times 10^{16}$ G
• Current closure through the neutron star crust
• Pulse redshift of pulsar timing array signals for all possible gravitational wave polarizations in modified general relativity
• A broadband radio study of PSR J0250+5854: the slowest-spinning radio pulsar known
• Luminosity of radio pulsar and its new emission death line
• Classification of pulsars with Dirichlet process Gaussian mixture model
• Anisotropic electron transport in the nuclear pasta phase
• Extinct radio pulsars as a source of subrelativistic positrons
• Magnetar outburst and spin-down glitch
• Statistical tests of young radio pulsars with/without supernova remnants: implying two origins of neutron stars
• Continuous gravitational waves from trapped magnetar ejecta and the connection to glitches and antiglitches
• The GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky Survey for pulsars and transients $-$ IV: Discovery of 4 new pulsars with an FFA search
• Gravitational wave signals in the deci-Hz range from neutrinos during the proto-neutron star cooling phase
• New upper limits on low-frequency radio emission from isolated neutron stars with LOFAR
• The influence of small scale magnetic field on the heating of J0250+5854 polar cap
• Is PSR J0726-2612 a dim isolated neutron star progenitor?
• Pulsar timing irregularities and the Neutron Star interior in the era of SKA: An Indian Outlook
• Physics of radio emission in the long-period pulsars
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Search for pulsars with periods of more than two seconds at declinations from +21${}^o$ to +42${}^o$
• X-ray nondetection of PSR J0250+5854
• Pulsar discovery prospect of FASTA
• Estimates of the Surface Magnetic Field Strength of Radio Pulsars
• SPARKESX: Single-dish PARKES data sets for finding the uneXpected -- A data challenge
• Light clusters as a possible source of crustal impurities: a quasi-particle approach
• Searching for $\gamma$-ray emission from LOTAAS pulsars
• Deep Synoptic Array Science: Searching for Long Duration Radio Transients with the DSA-110
• Physics beyond the Standard Model with the DSA-2000
• The GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky Survey for pulsars and transients -- III: searching for long period pulsars
• Radio luminosity of GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3: does it really exceed the spin-down power of the pulsar?