The Einstein@Home search for radio pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 discovery

TL;DR

This paper details the Einstein@Home project's search for new radio pulsars using extensive volunteer computing, leading to the discovery of PSR J2007+2722, a wide-profile isolated pulsar with unique properties, demonstrating the power of distributed computing.

Contribution

It presents the first Einstein@Home radio pulsar discovery and describes how volunteer computing enables searches in previously inaccessible parameter spaces.

Findings

Discovered PSR J2007+2722, a wide-profile isolated pulsar.

Able to detect pulsars in binary systems with orbital periods as short as 11 minutes.

Demonstrates the effectiveness of distributed volunteer computing for pulsar searches.

Abstract

Einstein@Home aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 193 countries, to search for new neutron stars using data from electromagnetic and gravitational-wave detectors. This paper presents a detailed description of the search for new radio pulsars using Pulsar ALFA survey data from the Arecibo Observatory. The enormous computing power allows this search to cover a new region of parameter space; it can detect pulsars in binary systems with orbital periods as short as 11 minutes. We also describe the first Einstein@Home discovery, the 40.8 Hz isolated pulsar PSR J2007+2722, and provide a full timing model. PSR J2007+2722's pulse profile is remarkably wide with emission over almost the entire spin period. This neutron star is most likely a disrupted recycled pulsar, about as old as its characteristic spin-down age of 404 Myr. However there is a small chance that it was born recently, with a low magnetic field. If so, upper limits on the X-ray flux suggest but can not prove that PSR J2007+2722 is at least ~ 100 kyr old. In the future, we expect that the massive computing power provided by volunteers should enable many additional radio pulsar discoveries.