Radio emission from a pulsar's magnetic pole revealed by general relativity
Abstract
Binary pulsars are affected by general relativity (GR), causing the spin axes of each pulsar to precess. We present polarimetric radio observations of PSR J1906+0746 that demonstrate the validity of the geometrical model of pulsar polarisation. We reconstruct the (sky-projected) polarisation emission map over the pulsar's magnetic pole and predict the disappearance of the detectable emission by 2028. Two additional tests of GR are performed in this system, including the spin-precession for strongly self-gravitating bodies. We constrain the relativistic treatment of the pulsar polarisation model and measure the pulsar beaming fraction, with implications for the population of neutron stars and the expected rate of neutron star mergers.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1909.06212,
title = {Radio emission from a pulsar's magnetic pole revealed by general relativity},
author = {Gregory Desvignes and Michael Kramer and Kejia Lee and Joeri van Leeuwen and Ingrid Stairs and Axel Jessner and Ismael Cognard and Laura Kasian and Andrew Lyne and Ben W. Stappers},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.06212},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Published in Science 06 September 2019