MeerKAT discovery of 13 new pulsars in Omega Centauri

Abstract

The most massive globular cluster in our Galaxy, Omega Centauri, is an interesting target for pulsar searches, because of its multiple stellar populations and the intriguing possibility that it was once the nucleus of a galaxy that was absorbed into the Milky Way. The recent discoveries of pulsars in this globular cluster and their association with known X-ray sources was a hint that, given the large number of known X-ray sources, there is a much larger undiscovered pulsar population. We used the superior sensitivity of the MeerKAT radio telescope to search for pulsars in Omega Centauri. In this paper, we present some of the first results of this survey, including the discovery of 13 new pulsars; the total number of known pulsars in this cluster currently stands at 18. At least half of them are in binary systems and preliminary orbital constraints suggest that most of the binaries have light companions. We also discuss the ratio between isolated and binaries pulsars and how they were formed in this cluster.

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Discovery and timing of ten new millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster Terzan 5
• Discovery of 37 new pulsars through GPU-accelerated reprocessing of archival data of the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey
• New constraints on the central mass contents of Omega Centauri from combined stellar kinematics and pulsar timing
• The FAST Globular Cluster Pulsar Survey (GC FANS)
• Neutron star mass in dark matter clumps
• Timing of Pulsars in the Globular Cluster Omega Centauri
• Exotica in the Globular Cluster M4, Studied with Chandra, HST, and the VLA
• The impact of 2D and 3D BAO measurements on the Cosmic Distance Duality Relation with HII galaxies
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• Probing populations of dark stellar remnants in the globular clusters 47 Tuc and Terzan 5 using pulsar timing
• A study of the light bending phenomenon under full general relativity for a pulsar in a binary with a Schwarzschild black hole