Discovery of three new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of three new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5 using an innovative archival data analysis method, increasing the known pulsar population in this dense stellar system.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel analysis technique applied to archival observations, leading to the discovery of three new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5.

Findings

Discovered three new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5.

Increased the total known pulsars in Terzan 5 to 37.

Identified the fastest pulsar in the cluster at 1.89 ms.

Abstract

We report on the discovery of three new millisecond pulsars (namely J1748-2446aj, J1748-2446ak and J1748-2446al) in the inner regions of the dense stellar system Terzan 5. These pulsars have been discovered thanks to a method, alternative to the classical search routines, that exploited the large set of archival observations of Terzan 5 acquired with the Green Bank Telescope over 5 years (from 2010 to 2015). This technique allowed the analysis of stacked power spectra obtained by combining ~206 hours of observation. J1748-2446aj has a spin period of ~2.96 ms, J1748-2446ak of ~1.89 ms (thus it is the fourth fastest pulsar in the cluster) and J1748-2446al of ~5.95 ms. All the three millisecond pulsars are isolated and currently we have timing solutions only for J1748-2446aj and J1748-2446ak. For these two systems, we evaluated the contribution to the measured spin-down rate of the acceleration due to the cluster potential field, thus estimating the intrinsic spin-down rates, which are in agreement with those typically measured for millisecond pulsars in globular clusters. Our results increase to 37 the number of pulsars known in Terzan 5, which now hosts 25% of the entire pulsar population identified, so far, in globular clusters.