Tests of General Relativity from Timing the Double Pulsar

By Michael Kramer, Ingrid Stairs, R. Manchester, M. Mclaughlin, Andrew G. Lyne, R. Ferdman, M. Burgay, D. R. Lorimer, A. Possenti, N. D'Amico and 5 more. Science, 2006

848 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The double pulsar system PSR J0737-3039A/B is unique in that both neutron stars are detectable as radio pulsars. They are also known to have much higher mean orbital velocities and accelerations than those of other binary pulsars. The system is therefore a good candidate for testing Einstein's theory of general relativity and alternative theories of gravity in the strong-field regime. We report on precision timing observations taken over the 2.5 years since its discovery and present four independent strong-field tests of general relativity. These tests use the theory-independent mass ratio of the two stars. By measuring relativistic corrections to the Keplerian description of the orbital motion, we find that the “post-Keplerian” parameter s agrees with the value predicted by general relativity within an uncertainty of 0.05%, the most precise test yet obtained. We also show that the transverse velocity of the system's center of mass is extremely small. Combined with the system's location near the Sun, this result suggests that future tests of gravitational theories with the double pulsar will supersede the best current solar system tests. It also implies that the second-born pulsar may not have formed through the core collapse of a helium star, as is usually assumed.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/27e102b51d2d05579de4d453c44e7f5405087d90

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michela Mapelli
2. Ilya Mandel
3. N. Langer
4. G. Hobbs
5. N. Giacobbo
6. Michael Kramer
7. Bing Zhang
8. B. Metzger

In Oceanography

1. G. Hobbs
2. N. Wex
3. R. Manchester
4. Michael Kramer
5. R. Shannon
6. J. Verbiest
7. N. Yunes
8. Russell T. Edwards

Citations in the corpus

• On the nature and evolution of the unique binary pulsar J1903+0327 (2010, background): “Precise mass measurements for components of double neutron star systems range from 1.25M⊙ Kramer et al. (2006) to 1.44M⊙ Weisberg et al. (2010); this shows that a large majority of NSs form with masses near the Chandrasekhar limit Lorimer (2008).”
• ON THE MASS DISTRIBUTION AND BIRTH MASSES OF NEUTRON STARS (2012, neutral): “Kramer et al. 2006; 2.”
• Detection of 107 glitches in 36 southern pulsars (2012, background): “Hobbs et al. (2010) suggested that these slow glitches are a manifestation of the discrete states in spin-down rate first seen in PSR B1931+24 (Kramer et al. 2006).”
• Trapping light by mimicking gravitational lensing (2013, neutral): “The two main experimental findings are again observed: (1) the deflection angle increases with decreasing impact parameter and (2) the impinging light is captured by the system for impact parameters below the critical value, b ≤ bc.”
• The relativistic pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1738+0333 - II. The most stringent test of scalar-tensor gravity (2012, methodology): “…from the double 5 The two “horns” of the constraints imposed by PSR B1913+16 come from the fact that this system provides only three postKeplerian observables, i.e., only one test, and some fine-tuned models can thus pass it. c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 pulsar results (Kramer et al. 2006).”
• THE NANOGRAV NINE-YEAR DATA SET: OBSERVATIONS, ARRIVAL TIME MEASUREMENTS, AND ANALYSIS OF 37 MILLISECOND PULSARS (2015, background): “…in such binary systems serves as compelling indirect evidence of gravitational radiation, as the observed orbital decay rates match the expected rates due to loss of energy and angular momentum via emission of gravitational waves (Kramer et al. 2006; Weisberg et al. 2010; Fonseca et al. 2014).”
• The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, background): “ater; see [109]). If a millisecond pulsar were to be found in a close binary with another neutron star, the gain in timing precision would eventually allow the measurement of higher-order effects (see [110] for a discussion in the context of the double pulsar PSR J0737–3039). However, because millise”
• A new route towards merging massive black holes (2016, background): “…systems have also been found, most importantly the Hulse-Taylor system (Hulse & Taylor 1975; Weisberg et al. 2010) and more recently the double pulsar PSR J0737-3039 (Burgay et al. 2003; Kramer et al. 2006), whose orbital decay has unambiguously confirmed Einstein’s gravitational wave prediction.”
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision Timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars (2017, background): “…2016a, 2016b; The LIGO Scientific Collaboration et al. 2017), and indirectly via binary-pulsar orbital-decay measurements in the ∼100μHz band (e.g., Kramer et al. 2006; Fonseca et al. 2014; Weisberg & Huang 2016); proposed space-based detectors will be sensitive in the ∼10−2 Hz band…”
• Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems (2017, methodology): “PSR J0737−3039 This DNS system is the famous double pulsar (Burgay et al. 2003; Lyne et al. 2004; Kramer et al. 2006b).”
• Tests of general relativity with the binary black hole signals from the LIGO-Virgo catalog GWTC-1 (2019, background): “At 0 PN we find that the bound from GW170608 beats the one from GW170817, but remains weaker than the one from the double pulsar by 1 order of magnitude [107,108].”
• European Pulsar Timing Array Limits On An Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background (2015, background): “Since then, observations of the double-pulsar, PSR J0737−3039, have provided even greater constraints, placing limits on deviations from general relativity of less than 0.05 per cent (Kramer et al. (2006), Kramer et al. in preparation).”
• Testing Relativistic Gravity with Radio Pulsars (2014, result): “bservations: _!, , P_ b, r, s. Calculating the inclination angle of the orbit ifrom s= sini, one nds that the line-of-sight is inclined with respect to the plane of the binary orbit by just about 1:3[76]. As a consequence, during the superior conjunction the signals of pulsar Apass pulsar Bat a dist”
• Progenitors of gravitational wave mergers: binary evolution with the stellar grid-based code ComBinE (2018, background): “DCOs hosting a radio pulsar are also of special interest since their ultra-stable spin-down nature allows for precise timing of their motion in relativistic orbits and thereby tests of gravitational theories in the strong-field regime (Damour & Taylor 1992; Kramer et al. 2006; Wex 2014).”