PSR J0952−0607: The Fastest and Heaviest Known Galactic Neutron Star

By R. Romani, D. Kandel, A. Filippenko, T. Brink, Weikang Zheng. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2022

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We describe Keck-telescope spectrophotometry and imaging of the companion of the “black widow” pulsar PSR J0952−0607, the fastest known spinning neutron star (NS) in the disk of the Milky Way. The companion is very faint at minimum brightness, presenting observational challenges, but we have measured multicolor light curves and obtained radial velocities over the illuminated “day” half of the orbit. The model fits indicate system inclination i = 59.°8 ± 1.°9 and a pulsar mass M NS = 2.35 ± 0.17 M ⊙, the largest well-measured mass found to date. Modeling uncertainties are small, since the heating is not extreme; the companion lies well within its Roche lobe and a simple direct-heating model provides the best fit. If the NS started at a typical pulsar birth mass, nearly 1 M ⊙ has been accreted; this may be connected with the especially low intrinsic dipole surface field, estimated at 6 × 107 G. Joined with reanalysis of other black widow and redback pulsars, we find that the minimum value for the maximum NS mass is Mmax>2.19M⊙ (2.09 M ⊙) at 1σ (3σ) confidence. This is ∼ 0.15 M ⊙ heavier than the lower limit on Mmax implied by the white dwarf–pulsar binaries measured via radio Shapiro-delay techniques.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b6fb244e8477f409498859710973a598cb4f6f4

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Citations in the corpus

On the Sound Speed in Neutron Stars (2022, background): “Note: After the completion of this work, a new mass measurement of 2.35± 0.17Me has been published for the pulsar in the binary system PSR J0952-0607 (Romani et al. 2022).”
Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 2.5–4.5 M ⊙ Compact Object and a Neutron Star (2024, background): “Given that the mass of the primary overlaps with current estimates of the maximum known neutron star mass (Landry & Read 2021; Romani et al. 2022), we also analyze GW230529 with a BNS waveform model that allows for tidal interactions on both the primary and the secondary components of the binary.”