PSR~J1910$-$5959A: A rare gravitational laboratory for testing white dwarf models

Abstract

PSRJ1910-5959A (J1910A) is a binary millisecond pulsar in a 0.837 day circular orbit around a helium white dwarf (HeWD) companion. This pulsar is located 6.3 arcmin away from the centre of the globular cluster NGC6752. Given the large offset, the association of the pulsar to NGC6752 has been debated. We have made use of two decades of archival Parkes 64-m "Murriyang" telescope data and recently carried out observations with the MeerKAT telescope. We obtained Pulse times of arrival using standard data reduction techniques and analysed using Bayesian pulsar timing techniques. We analysed the pulsar's total intensity and polarisation profile, to study the interstellar scattering along the line of sight, and the pulsar's geometry by applying the rotating vector model. We obtain precise measurements of several post-Keplerian parameters: the range $r=0.202(6)T_{\odot }$ and shape s=0.999823(4) of the Shapiro delay, from which we infer the orbital inclination to be $88.9_{-0.14}^{+0.15}°$ and the masses of both the pulsar and the companion to be $1.55(7)M_{\odot }$ and $0.202(6)M_{\odot }$ respectively; a secular change in the orbital period ${\dot{P}}_{\mathrm{b}}=-53_{-6.0}^{+7.4}\times 10^{-15}$\,s\,s${}^{-1}$ that proves the association to NGGC6752 and a secular change in the projected semi-major axis of the pulsar $\dot{x}=-40.7_{-8.2}^{+7.3}\times 10^{-16}$\,s\,s${}^{-1}$ that is likely caused by the spin-orbit interaction from a misaligned HeWD spin, at odds with the likely isolated binary evolution of the system. We also discuss some theoretical models for the structure and evolution of WDs in NS-WD binaries by using J1910A's companion as a test bed. J1910A is a rare system for which several parameters of both the pulsar and the HeWD companion can be accurately measured. As such, it is a test bed to discriminate between alternative models for HeWD structure and cooling.

18 pages, 12 figures. Abstract shortened and rephrased because of arXiv characters limits. Accepted for publication on A&A on January 9th 2023 Updated version after linguistic revision

References in corpus (13)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Improved GRAVITY astrometric accuracy from modeling of optical aberrations
• The MeerKAT Telescope as a Pulsar Facility: System verification and early science results from MeerTime
• The masses of PSR J1911-5958A and its white dwarf companion
• Eight new millisecond pulsars from the first MeerKAT globular cluster census
• Lense-Thirring frame dragging induced by a fast-rotating white dwarf in a binary pulsar system
• Modelling annual and orbital variations in the scintillation of the relativistic binary PSR J1141$-$6545
• The Stellar Distribution Function and Local Vertical Potential from Gaia DR2
• The puzzling properties of the Helium White Dwarf orbiting the millisecond pulsar PSR J1911-5958A in NGC 6752
• Timing of millisecond pulsars in NGC 6752 - II. Proper motions of the pulsars in the cluster outskirts
• Radio pulsar polarization as a coherent sum of orthogonal proper mode waves

Cited by in corpus (7)

• A pulsar in a binary with a compact object in the mass gap between neutron stars and black holes
• Analytical results for binary dynamics at the first post-Newtonian order in Einstein-Cartan theory with the Weyssenhoff fluid
• Timing of millisecond pulsars in NGC\,6752 -- III. On the presence of non-luminous matter in the cluster's core
• Fastest spinning millisecond pulsars: indicators for quark matter in neutron stars?
• Rapidly Spinning Massive Pulsars as an Indicator of Quark Deconfinement
• Identification and characterization of optical companions to the population of millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster M3
• An attempt to study axion-photon coupling using compact binary systems with high Shapiro time delay