A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Updated Constraints from Six Years of NICER Observations

TL;DR

This study presents an updated analysis of NICER observations of pulsar PSR J0030+0451, refining its mass and radius estimates and reducing model discrepancies, with implications for neutron star dense matter physics.

Contribution

The paper provides the first combined NICER and XMM-Newton analysis of PSR J0030+0451, significantly improving mass-radius constraints and hot spot modeling accuracy.

Findings

Mass = 1.43^{+0.20}_{-0.17} M_sun

Radius = 12.68^{+1.31}_{-1.04} km

Reduced tension with other neutron star measurements

Abstract

Pulse-profile modeling of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars targeted by NICER has enabled mass--radius constraints of several neutron star sources, with implications for the dense-matter equation of state. For the bright isolated pulsar PSR J0030+0451, the inferred mass--radius was previously found to depend strongly on the assumed hot spot model. These hot-spot models yielded different mass--radius constraints, with the statistically preferred model exhibiting some mild tension with results inferred for PSR J0437$-$4715, PSR~J0614$-$3329, and GW170817. We present an updated pulse-profile analysis of PSR J0030+0451 using new NICER observations obtained between 2017 July to 2023 January, increasing the number of X-ray counts by about 50% compared to previous analyses. We jointly analyze the NICER data with archival XMM-Newton observations to better constrain the source spectrum and background. The new analysis significantly reduces the discrepancy between the hot spot models. The inferred mass and radius are $M = 1.43^{+0.20}_{-0.17}\,M_\odot$ and $R_{\rm eq} = 12.68^{+1.31}_{-1.04}$ km (68% credible intervals), reducing the tension with the results from other sources. In addition, the inferred hot spot configurations suggest the presence of intra-spot temperature gradients.