Search for a Radio Pulsar in the Remnant of Supernova 1987A

TL;DR

This study searched for a radio pulsar in SN 1987A using the Parkes telescope, found no pulsar but detected transient candidates and giant pulses from a known pulsar, informing models of neutron star formation.

Contribution

First comprehensive radio search for pulsar in SN 1987A, setting upper flux limits and analyzing transient events and giant pulses in the LMC.

Findings

No pulsar detected in SN 1987A with flux limits of 31 μJy at 1.4 GHz and 21 μJy at 3 GHz.

Four transient candidates with DMs 150-840 cm$^{-3}$ pc observed, but no confirmed association.

Detected giant pulses from PSR B0540$-$69, confirming system sensitivity.

Abstract

We have observed the remnant of supernova SN~1987A (SNR~1987A), located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), to search for periodic and/or transient radio emission with the Parkes 64\,m-diameter radio telescope. We found no evidence of a radio pulsar in our periodicity search and derived 8$\sigma$ upper bounds on the flux density of any such source of $31\,\mu$Jy at 1.4~GHz and $21\,\mu$Jy at 3~GHz. Four candidate transient events were detected with greater than $7\sigma$ significance, with dispersion measures (DMs) in the range 150 to 840\,cm$^{-3}\,$pc. For two of them, we found a second pulse at slightly lower significance. However, we cannot at present conclude that any of these are associated with a pulsar in SNR~1987A. As a check on the system, we also observed PSR~B0540$-$69, a young pulsar which also lies in the LMC. We found eight giant pulses at the DM of this pulsar. We discuss the implications of these results for models of the supernova remnant, neutron star formation and pulsar evolution.