A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
Abstract
Many physically motivated extensions to general relativity (GR) predict significant deviations in the properties of spacetime surrounding massive neutron stars. We report the measurement of a 2.01 +/- 0.04 solar mass pulsar in a 2.46-hr orbit with a 0.172 +/- 0.003 solar mass white dwarf. The high pulsar mass and the compact orbit make this system a sensitive laboratory of a previously untested strong-field gravity regime. Thus far, the observed orbital decay agrees with GR, supporting its validity even for the extreme conditions present in the system. The resulting constraints on deviations support the use of GR-based templates for ground-based gravitational wave detectors. Additionally, the system strengthens recent constraints on the properties of dense matter and provides insight to binary stellar astrophysics and pulsar recycling.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1304.6875,
title = {A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary},
author = {John Antoniadis and Paulo C. C. Freire and Norbert Wex and Thomas M. Tauris and Ryan S. Lynch and Marten H. van Kerkwijk and Michael Kramer and Cees Bassa and Vik S. Dhillon and Thomas Driebe and Jason W. T. Hessels and Victoria M. Kaspi and Vladislav I. Kondratiev and Norbert Langer and Thomas R. Marsh and Maura A. McLaughlin and Timothy T. Pennucci and Scott M. Ransom and Ingrid H. Stairs and Joeri van Leeuwen and Joris P. W. Verbiest and David G. Whelan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.6875},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
This is the authors' version of the work. The definite version is published in Science Online, 26 April 2013, Vol: 340, Issue: 6131 doi: 10.1126/science.1233232. 54 pages, 18 figures, 4 tables