A Radio Pulsar Spinning at 716 Hz

By Jason W. T. Hessels, S. Ransom, Ingrid Stairs, P. Freire, Victoria Kaspi, F. Camilo. Science, 2006

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We have discovered a 716-hertz eclipsing binary radio pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5 using the Green Bank Telescope. It is the fastest spinning neutron star found to date, breaking the 24-year record held by the 642-hertz pulsar B1937+21. The difficulty in detecting this pulsar, because of its very low flux density and high eclipse fraction (∼40% of the orbit), suggests that even faster spinning neutron stars exist. If the pulsar has a mass less than twice the mass of the Sun, then its radius must be constrained by the spin rate to be <16 kilometers. The short period of this pulsar also constrains models that suggest that gravitational radiation, through an r-mode (Rossby wave) instability, limits the maximum spin frequency of neutron stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Oceanography

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Citations in the corpus

Superradiance (2015, methodology): “The bound is obtained by imposing τ < τspindown for three known sources, namely pulsars J1938+2012 [685] and J1748-2446ad [686], and pulsar binary B1957+20 [687].”
Thermonuclear Burst Oscillations (2012, background): “Although no current burst oscillation source (and indeed not even the most rapidly rotating radio pulsar; Hessels et al. 2006) rotates fast enough to rule out equations of state, the search for extremely rapid rotators does motivate burst oscillation searches.”
Progress in Constraining Nuclear Symmetry Energy Using Neutron Star Observables Since GW170817 (2021, background): “In fact, most of the studies found that the minimum frequencies are significantly higher than the fastest known pulsar PSR J1748-2446ad with a frequency of 716 Hz [151], thus making GW190814’s secondary the most massive and fastest known pulsar if its nature is confirmed.”
Combined Constraints on the Equation of State of Dense Neutron-rich Matter from Terrestrial Nuclear Experiments and Observations of Neutron Stars (2018, background): “…hand, properties of neutron stars and events involving them, such as the mass, radius, moment of inertia, quadrupole deformation, pulsing frequency (Hessels et al. 2006), cooling curve (Yakovlev et al. 2001; Page et al. 2006), frequencies and damping times of various oscillating modes, spin…”
Modelling the behaviour of accretion flows in X-ray binaries (2007, background): “…rotating, but even the fastest confirmed millisecond pulsar PSR J1748–2446ad (at 716 Hz) is rotating at only approximately half the Keplerian period (Hessels et al. 2006), where the energy released in the boundary layer should still be as much as that in the disc (Sibgatullin & Sunyaev 2000).”
Science with ASKAP (2008, background): “Recent observations of globular clusters have led to the discovery of the fastest spinning pulsar [128], the shortest orbital period of any known radio pulsar [51], an analysis of the surface mass density of globular clusters [103], and the detection of ionised intracluster gas [104].”
THE EQUATION OF STATE FROM OBSERVED MASSES AND RADII OF NEUTRON STARS (2010, background): “…of the maximum mass star; 3. the EOS is anywhere hydrodynamically unstable, i.e., hasa pressure that decreases with increasing density; and 4. the maximum mass star has a maximum stable rotation rate less than 716 Hz, the spin frequency of the fastest known pulsar, Ter 5AD (Hessels et al. 2006).”
The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes (2014, background): “Supermassive neutron stars are potentially relevant, but in practice the highest rotation rate ever seen fromapulsar (716Hz; see [47]) is probably a factor of two less than themaximum rotation rate [48].”
THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FOLLOW-UP WITH ADVANCED LIGO AND VIRGO (2014, background): “However, the fastest-spinning millisecond pulsar, PSR J1748-2446ad (Hessels et al. 2006), has a dimensionless spin parameter of∼0.4, and the theoretical evolutionary limits on NS spin-up in BNS systems are uncertain.”
Detecting gravitational wave emission from the known accreting neutron stars (2008, background): “The current record stands at 716 Hz (Hessels et al. 2006) and surveys in nearby globular clusters continue to reveal a paucity of rapid rotators (Ransom et al. 2005; Hessels et al. 2007; Freire et al. 2008).”