Using the Five-Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), Chinese and Australian astronomers have discovered five new pulsars, two of which have very short rotation periods. The discovery was reported in a research paper published on the preprint server on November 1. arXiv.

Pulsars are strongly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles. This radiation can only be observed when the radiation beam is directed towards the Earth.

The fastest spinning pulsars, with spin times of less than 30 milliseconds, are called millisecond pulsars (MSPs). These are thought to occur in binary systems, with the more massive component first collapsing into a neutron star and then spinning due to accretion of matter from the secondary star.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Qi-Jun Zhi of Guizhou Normal University in Guiyang, China, reports the detection of five new pulsars using FAST as part of a pilot survey of mid-galactic latitudes.

“In 13.5 hours of observations covering an area of ​​4.7 square degrees, we discovered five new pulsars and discovered all six known pulsars in the region,” the researchers said.

The newly discovered pulsars were named PSR J1826−0049, PSR J1852+1200, PSR J1837+0419, PSR J1849+1001 and PSR J1839+0543. Two of these pulsars, PSR J1826−0049 and PSR J1852+1200, turned out to be MSPs with spin periods of 4.59 and 3.86 milliseconds, respectively.

PSR J1849+1001 and PSR J1839+0543 are classified as “lightly processed” massive white dwarf pulsars (with a minimum mass of about 0.87 solar masses). PSR J1837+0419 appears as an isolated normal pulsar with a rotation period of 504.74 milliseconds.

The distribution measurements of the detected pulsars range from 42.67 to 174.75 pcs/cm.³. The researchers also measured the surface magnetic field strengths of PSR J1826−0049, PSR J1849+1001, and PSR J1837+0419, which were 0.33, 1.3, and 840 billion Gauss, respectively. The typical ages of these three pulsars are estimated to be 3 billion, 11.5 billion and 5.9 million years, respectively.

To summarize, the authors of the paper note that observing facilities such as the Parkes radio telescope’s FAST have great potential to detect the existence of even hundreds of new millisecond pulsars.

“We performed population simulations to estimate the potential yield of MSPs and found that both FAST and Parkes’ new Phased Array Feed surveys focusing on mid-Galactic latitudes were able to detect several hundred new MSPs,” the researchers concluded. Source