Constraining the Neutron Star Mass–Radius Relation and Dense Matter Equation of State with NICER. I. The Millisecond Pulsar X-Ray Data Set

By S. Bogdanov, S. Guillot, P. Ray, M. Wolff, D. Chakrabarty, W. Ho, M. Kerr, F. Lamb, A. Lommen, R. Ludlam and 20 more. Astrophysical Journal, 2019

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the set of deep Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray timing observations of the nearby rotation-powered millisecond pulsars PSRs J0437−4715, J0030+0451, J1231−1411, and J2124−3358, selected as targets for constraining the mass–radius relation of neutron stars and the dense matter equation of state (EoS) via modeling of their pulsed thermal X-ray emission. We describe the instrument, observations, and data processing/reduction procedures, as well as the series of investigations conducted to ensure that the properties of the data sets are suitable for parameter estimation analyses to produce reliable constraints on the neutron star mass–radius relation and the dense matter EoS. We find that the long-term timing and flux behavior and the Fourier-domain properties of the event data do not exhibit any anomalies that could adversely affect the intended measurements. From phase-selected spectroscopy, we find that emission from the individual pulse peaks is well described by a single-temperature hydrogen atmosphere spectrum, with the exception of PSR J0437−4715, for which multiple temperatures are required.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fd1064f7d2b6d3381b2219d8fc39f0f39ba4dd9a

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Watts
2. M. Miller
3. S. Guillot
4. T. Strohmayer
5. J. Steiner
6. Ronald A. Remillard
7. A. Harding
8. S. Bogdanov

Citations in the corpus

• An Updated Mass–Radius Analysis of the 2017–2018 NICER Data Set of PSR J0030+0451 (2023, methodology): “What we present here is the analysis of a revised NICER data set ( hereafter B19v006 ) , derived from the one presented in Bogdanov et al. ( 2019a ) and covering the same observations, but modi fi ed to be consistent with the latest NICER response matrix.”
• An Empirical Background Model for the NICER X-Ray Timing Instrument (2021, background): “However, it was recognized soon after launch that all of the NICER FPMs exhibit systematically higher levels of this low-energy noise when the XTI is illuminated by sunlight during the course of the ISS orbit (e.g., Bogdanov et al. 2019).”
• PSR J0030+0451 Mass and Radius from NICER Data and Implications for the Properties of Neutron Star Matter (2019, methodology): “Computations of pulse waveforms like those used here were verified by members of the NICER Lightcurve Working Group, as described in Bogdanov et al. (2019b).”
• A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Millisecond Pulsar Parameter Estimation (2019, methodology): “The NICER XTI data set d associated with the rotation-powered MSP PSR J0030+0451 is necessarily a product of pre-processing, and its curation is largely described in Bogdanov et al. (2019a). However, there are a number of details that are specific to each data set and so we record a summary of these”
• A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Evidence for a Global-scale Multipolar Magnetic Field (2019, background): “It does have a more obviously double-peaked X-ray pulse profile than some of the other NICER targets (Bogdanov et al. 2019), but its X-ray properties are otherwise quite standard.”