Study of 72 pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey: Timing analysis, glitch activity, emission variability, and a pulsar in an eccentric binary

Abstract

We present new discoveries and results from long-term timing of 72 pulsars discovered in the Arecibo PALFA survey, including precise determination of astrometric and spin parameters, and flux density and scatter broadening measurements at 1.4 GHz. Notable discoveries include two young pulsars (characteristic ages $\sim$30 kyr) with no apparent supernova remnant associations, three mode changing, 12 nulling and two intermittent pulsars. We detected eight glitches in five pulsars. Among them is PSR J1939+2609, an apparently old pulsar (characteristic age $\sim$1 Gy), and PSR J1954+2529, which likely belongs to a newly-emerging class of binary pulsars. The latter is the only pulsar among the 72 that is clearly not isolated: a non-recycled neutron star with a 931-ms spin period in an eccentric ($e=0.114$) wide ($P_b=82.7$d) orbit with a companion of undetermined nature having a minimum mass of $\sim 0.6M_{\odot }$. Since operations at Arecibo ceased in 2020 August, we give a final tally of PALFA sky coverage, and compare its 207 pulsar discoveries to the known population. On average, they are 50% more distant than other Galactic plane radio pulsars; PALFA millisecond pulsars (MSP) have twice the dispersion measure per unit spin period than the known population of MSP in the Plane. The four intermittent pulsars discovered by PALFA more than double the population of such objects, which should help to improve our understanding of pulsar magnetosphere physics. The statistics for these, RRATS, and nulling pulsars suggest that there are many more of these objects in the Galaxy than was previously thought.

39 pages, 18 figures, 9 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (34)

• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• 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
• Refined Mass and Geometric Measurements of the High-Mass PSR J0740+6620
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: VI. Discovery and timing of 142 pulsars and a Galactic population analysis
• Switched magnetospheric regulation of pulsar spin-down
• Timing Measurements of the Relativistic Binary Pulsar PSR B1913+16
• Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Pulsar Nulling and Mode Changing
• Precise Gamma-Ray Timing and Radio Observations of 17 Fermi Gamma-Ray Pulsars
• 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 FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: I. Project design and pulsar discoveries
• An Eccentric Binary Millisecond Pulsar in the Galactic Plane
• Three Millisecond Pulsars in FERMI LAT Unassociated Bright Sources
• Gravitational-radiation losses from the pulsar-white-dwarf binary PSR J1141-6545
• The Binary Companion of Young, Relativistic Pulsar J1906+0746
• Galactic Supernova Remnant Candidates Discovered by THOR
• Discovery of 28 pulsars using new techniques for sorting pulsar candidates
• Electrodynamics of pulsar magnetospheres
• Radio and X-ray observations of the intermittent pulsar J1832+0029
• Multiwavelength monitoring and X-ray brightening of Be X-ray binary PSR J2032+4127/MT91 213 on its approach to periastron
• 30 Glitches in slow pulsars
• Lense-Thirring frame dragging induced by a fast-rotating white dwarf in a binary pulsar system
• Asymmetric mass ratios for bright double neutron-star mergers
• Two long-term intermittent pulsars discovered in the PALFA Survey
• PSR J1838-0537: Discovery of a young, energetic gamma-ray pulsar
• Timing of five millisecond pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey
• Mode switching and oscillations in PSR B1828-11
• Timing of 29 Pulsars Discovered in the PALFA Survey
• Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA. III. Precursor Survey and Population Synthesis
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XV: completion of the intermediate latitude survey with the discovery and timing of 25 further pulsars
• Ultra-High Resolution Intensity Statistics of a Scintillating Source

Cited by in corpus (14)

• A Sun-like star orbiting a black hole
• The Third Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: VI. The discovery of 473 new pulsars
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey: II. Discovery of 76 Galactic rotating radio transients and their enigma
• The second set of pulsar discoveries by CHIME/FRB/Pulsar: 14 Rotating Radio Transients and 7 pulsars
• Discovery of 37 new pulsars through GPU-accelerated reprocessing of archival data of the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey
• CHIME Discovery of a Binary Pulsar with a Massive Non-Degenerate Companion
• Search and identification of transient and variable radio sources using MeerKAT observations: a case study on the MAXI J1820+070 field
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey: III. Timing results of 30 FAST-GPPS discovered pulsars
• Wide binary pulsars from electron-capture supernovae
• A Study of GeV Gamma-ray Emission toward Supernova Remnant G51.26+0.11 and Its Molecular Environment
• The Galactic distribution of pulsar scattering and the $\tau -\mathrm{DM}$ relation
• The SPAN512 mid-latitude pulsar survey at the Nançay Radio Telescope
• New supernova remnant candidates in the LOFAR Two Metre Sky Survey