Discovery of Nine Gamma-Ray Pulsars in Fermi-LAT Data Using a New Blind Search Method

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi-LAT data using a novel hierarchical blind search method that is computationally efficient and effective for detecting isolated pulsars at high frequencies.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new hierarchical search method for gamma-ray pulsars, incorporating metric-based parameter space gridding and photon probability weights, enabling the discovery of previously unknown pulsars.

Findings

Nine gamma-ray pulsars discovered with spin frequencies between 3 and 12 Hz.

Two young, energetic pulsars located on the Galactic plane.

Seven older, less energetic pulsars, with some at high Galactic latitudes.

Abstract

We report the discovery of nine previously unknown gamma-ray pulsars in a blind search of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT). The pulsars were found with a novel hierarchical search method originally developed for detecting continuous gravitational waves from rapidly rotating neutron stars. Designed to find isolated pulsars spinning at up to kHz frequencies, the new method is computationally efficient, and incorporates several advances, including a metric-based gridding of the search parameter space (frequency, frequency derivative and sky location) and the use of photon probability weights. The nine pulsars have spin frequencies between 3 and 12 Hz, and characteristic ages ranging from 17 kyr to 3 Myr. Two of them, PSRs J1803-2149 and J2111+4606, are young and energetic Galactic-plane pulsars (spin-down power above 6e35 erg/s and ages below 100 kyr). The seven remaining pulsars, PSRs J0106+4855, J0622+3749, J1620-4927, J1746-3239, J2028+3332, J2030+4415, J2139+4716, are older and less energetic; two of them are located at higher Galactic latitudes (|b| > 10 deg). PSR J0106+4855 has the largest characteristic age (3 Myr) and the smallest surface magnetic field (2e11 G) of all LAT blind-search pulsars. PSR J2139+4716 has the lowest spin-down power (3e33 erg/s) among all non-recycled gamma-ray pulsars ever found. Despite extensive multi-frequency observations, only PSR J0106+4855 has detectable pulsations in the radio band. The other eight pulsars belong to the increasing population of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars.