CHIME Discovery of a Binary Pulsar with a Massive Non-Degenerate Companion

Abstract

Of the more than $3,000$ radio pulsars currently known, only $\sim 300$ are in binary systems, and only five of these consist of young pulsars with massive non-degenerate companions. We present the discovery and initial timing, accomplished using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment telescope (CHIME), of the sixth such binary pulsar, PSR J2108+4516, a $0.577$-s radio pulsar in a 269-day orbit of eccentricity 0.09 with a companion of minimum mass $11$ M${}_{\odot }$. Notably, the pulsar undergoes periods of substantial eclipse, disappearing from the CHIME $400-800$ MHz observing band for a large fraction of its orbit, and displays significant dispersion measure and scattering variations throughout its orbit, pointing to the possibility of a circumstellar disk or very dense stellar wind associated with the companion star. Subarcsecond resolution imaging with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array unambiguously demonstrates that the companion is a bright, $V\simeq 11$ OBe star, EM* UHA 138, located at a distance of $3.26(14)$ kpc. Archival optical observations of \companion{} approximately suggest a companion mass ranging from $17.5$ M${}_{\odot }<M_{\mathrm{c}}<23$ M${}_{\odot }$, in turn constraining the orbital inclination angle to $50.3^{\circ }\lesssim i\lesssim 58.3^{\circ }$. With further multi-wavelength followup, PSR J2108+4516 promises to serve as another rare laboratory for the exploration of companion winds, circumstellar disks, and short-term evolution through extended-body orbital dynamics.

20 pages, 12 figures, accepted by ApJ