NICER Detection of Thermal X-ray Pulsations from the Massive Millisecond Pulsars PSR J0740+6620 and PSR J1614-2230

Abstract

We report the detection of X-ray pulsations from the rotation-powered millisecond-period pulsars PSR J0740+6620 and PSR J1614-2230, two of the most massive neutron stars known, using observations with the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER). We also analyze X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) data for both pulsars to obtain their time-averaged fluxes and study their respective X-ray fields. PSR J0740+6620 exhibits a broad double-peaked profile with a separation of ~0.4 in phase. PSR J1614-2230, on the other hand, has a broad single-peak profile. The broad modulations with soft X-ray spectra of both pulsars are indicative of thermal radiation from one or more small regions of the stellar surface. We show the NICER detections of X-ray pulsations for both pulsars and also discuss the phase relationship to their radio pulsations. In the case of PSR J0740+6620, this paper documents the data reduction performed to obtain the pulsation detection and prepare for pulse profile modeling analysis.

arXiv commentSubmitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters

References in corpus (37)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• Shapiro delay measurement of a two solar mass neutron star
• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• GW170817: Measurements of Neutron Star Radii and Equation of State
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• PSR J0030+0451 Mass and Radius from NICER Data and Implications for the Properties of Neutron Star Matter
• A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Millisecond Pulsar Parameter Estimation
• Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar
• The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• A NICER View of the Massive Pulsar PSR J0740+6620 Informed by Radio Timing and XMM-Newton Spectroscopy
• Refined Mass and Geometric Measurements of the High-Mass PSR J0740+6620
• The Nuclear Equation of State and Neutron Star Masses
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars
• The Chandra Source Catalog
• Peering into the dark side: magnesium lines establish a massive neutron star in PSR J2215+5135
• PINT: A Modern Software Package for Pulsar Timing
• Constraining the Neutron Star Mass-Radius Relation and Dense Matter Equation of State with NICER. I. The Millisecond Pulsar X-ray Data Set
• The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Observations and Narrowband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• Bounds on the Compactness of Neutron Stars from Brightness Oscillations
• The Correlation between Dispersion Measure and X-ray Column Density from Radio Pulsars
• The H-test probability distribution revisited: Improved sensitivity
• PSR J1810+1744: Companion Darkening and a Precise High Neutron Star Mass
• Formation of millisecond pulsars with CO white dwarf companions - I. PSR J1614-2230: Evidence for a neutron star born massive
• Constraints on Neutron Star Properties from X-ray Observations of Millisecond Pulsars
• The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey III: 45 New Pulsar Timing Solutions
• Pulse Profiles from Spinning Neutron Stars in the Hartle-Thorne Approximation
• Atmospheric Circulation on Black Widow Companions
• A Survey of 56 Mid-latitude EGRET Error Boxes for Radio Pulsars
• NICER X-ray Observations of Seven Nearby Rotation-Powered Millisecond Pulsars
• Mass-to-Radius Ratio for the Millisecond Pulsar J0437-4715
• The gamma-ray millisecond pulsar deathline, revisited - New velocity and distance measurements
• A Massive-born Neutron Star with a Massive White Dwarf Companion
• The Case for PSR J1614-2230 as a NICER Target
• The NuSTAR view of the non-thermal emission from PSR J0437-4715
• Shapiro delay in PSR~J1811$-$2405
• Discovery of Soft X-ray Pulsations from PSR J1231-1411 using NICER
• The ultracool helium-atmosphere white dwarf companion of PSR J0740+6620?

Cited by in corpus (19)

• A NICER View of the Massive Pulsar PSR J0740+6620 Informed by Radio Timing and XMM-Newton Spectroscopy
• The Radius of the High-mass Pulsar PSR J0740+6620 with 3.6 yr of NICER Data
• The Radius of PSR J0740+6620 from NICER with NICER Background Estimates
• A NICER View of PSR J1231$-$1411: A Complex Case
• An updated nuclear-physics and multi-messenger astrophysics framework for binary neutron star mergers
• Dark matter effects on tidal deformabilities and moment of inertia in a hadronic model with short-range correlations
• Neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state: from microscopic theory to macroscopic observations
• Dark matter component in hadronic models with short-range correlations
• Atmospheric Effects on Neutron Star Parameter Constraints with NICER
• Dense Matter in Neutron Stars with eXTP
• Holographic QCD in the NICER era
• Cross-Comparison of Sampling Algorithms for Pulse Profile Modeling of PSR J0740+6620
• Effects from Dark Matter Halos on X-ray Pulsar Pulse Profiles
• Nuclear-Physics Multi-Messenger Astrophysics Constraints on the Neutron-Star Equation of State: Adding NICER's PSR J0740+6620 Measurement
• Selection Effects in Periodic X-ray Data from Maximizing Detection Statistics
• A double dipole geometry for PSR~J0740+6620
• Equation-of-state-informed pulse profile modeling
• Accuracy and Applicability of the Hartle-Thorne and Komatsu-Eriguchi-Hachisu Methods for Modeling Rotating Neutron Stars
• Fully general relativistic description of rapidly-rotating axially-symmetric neutron stars for constraining nuclear matter equations of state