A radio pulsar spinning at 716 Hz |
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Authors: | Hessels Jason W T Ransom Scott M Stairs Ingrid H Freire Paulo C C Kaspi Victoria M Camilo Fernando |
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Affiliation: | Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8, Canada. hessels@physics.mcgill.ca |
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Abstract: | We have discovered a 716-hertz eclipsing binary radio pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5 using the Green Bank Telescope. It is the fastest spinning neutron star found to date, breaking the 24-year record held by the 642-hertz pulsar B1937+21. The difficulty in detecting this pulsar, because of its very low flux density and high eclipse fraction (approximately 40% of the orbit), suggests that even faster spinning neutron stars exist. If the pulsar has a mass less than twice the mass of the Sun, then its radius must be constrained by the spin rate to be <16 kilometers. The short period of this pulsar also constrains models that suggest that gravitational radiation, through an r-mode (Rossby wave) instability, limits the maximum spin frequency of neutron stars. |
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