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Nature Astronomy
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Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar

Nature Astronomyvolume 4, pages72–76 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite its importance to our understanding of physics at supranuclear densities, the equation of state (EoS) of matter deep within neutron stars remains poorly understood. Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are among the most useful astrophysical objects in the Universe for testing fundamental physics, and place some of the most stringent constraints on this high-density EoS. Pulsar timing—the process of accounting for every rotation of a pulsar over long time periods—can precisely measure a wide variety of physical phenomena, including those that allow the measurement of the masses of the components of a pulsar binary system1. One of these, called relativistic Shapiro delay2, can yield precise masses for both an MSP and its companion; however, it is only easily observed in a small subset of high-precision, highly inclined (nearly edge-on) binary pulsar systems. By combining data from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) 12.5-yr data set with recent orbital-phase-specific observations using the Green Bank Telescope, we have measured the mass of the MSP J0740+6620 to be\({\mathbf{2}}{\mathbf{.14}}_{ - {\mathbf{0}}{\mathbf{.09}}}^{ + {\mathbf{0}}{\mathbf{.10}}}\) M⊙ (68.3% credibility interval; the 95.4% credibility interval is\({\mathbf{2}}{\mathbf{.14}}_{ - {\mathbf{0}}{\mathbf{.18}}}^{ + {\mathbf{0}}{\mathbf{.20}}}\) M⊙). It is highly likely to be the most massive neutron star yet observed, and serves as a strong constraint on the neutron star interior EoS.

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Fig. 1: Timing residuals from all observations of J0740+6620 as a function of orbital phase, with superior conjunction at orbital phase = 0.25.
Fig. 2: Map of fittedχ2 distributions and corresponding probability density functions formp,mc andi.
Fig. 3: Timing residuals and DMX for all epochs of J0740+6620 data.

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ArticleOpen access20 June 2023

Data availability

PSR J0740+6620 TOAs from both the 12.5-yr data set and from the two supplemental GBT observations will be available athttps://data.nanograv.org on publication of this manuscript.

Code availability

All code mentioned in this work is open source and available at the links provided in the manuscript.

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Acknowledgements

The NANOGrav Project receives support from NSF Physics Frontiers Center award no. 1430284. Pulsar research at UBC is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Green Bank Observatory are facilities of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. S.M.R is a CIFAR Senior Fellow. W.W.Z. is supported by the CAS Pioneer Hundred Talents Program, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences grant no. XDB23000000 and the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant nos. 11690024, 11743002 and 11873067. Supplementary Green Bank conjunction-phase observing project codes were 18B-289 and 18B-372 (DDT).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    H. T. Cromartie

  2. Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    E. Fonseca

  3. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    S. M. Ransom

  4. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM, USA

    P. B. Demorest & K. Stovall

  5. X-ray Astrophysics Laboratory, Code 662, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Z. Arzoumanian

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    H. Blumer, P. R. Brook, N. Garver-Daniels, P. A. Gentile, M. L. Jones, M. T. Lam, D. R. Lorimer & M. A. McLaughlin

  7. Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    H. Blumer, P. R. Brook, N. Garver-Daniels, P. A. Gentile, M. L. Jones, M. T. Lam, D. R. Lorimer & M. A. McLaughlin

  8. Department of Physics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA

    M. E. DeCesar & D. J. Nice

  9. Department of Physics, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI, USA

    T. Dolch

  10. Infinia ML, Durham, NC, USA

    J. A. Ellis

  11. School of Chemistry, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    R. D. Ferdman

  12. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    E. C. Ferrara

  13. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    E. C. Ferrara

  14. Green Bank Observatory, Green Bank, WV, USA

    R. S. Lynch

  15. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    C. Ng & I. H. Stairs

  16. Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    C. Ng

  17. Hungarian Academy of Sciences MTA-ELTE ‘Extragalactic Astrophysics Research Group’, Institute of Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    T. T. Pennucci

  18. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, Australia

    R. Spiewak

  19. Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    J. K. Swiggum

  20. CAS Key Laboratory of FAST, NAOC, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    W. W. Zhu

Authors
  1. H. T. Cromartie
  2. E. Fonseca
  3. S. M. Ransom
  4. P. B. Demorest
  5. Z. Arzoumanian
  6. H. Blumer
  7. P. R. Brook
  8. M. E. DeCesar
  9. T. Dolch
  10. J. A. Ellis
  11. R. D. Ferdman
  12. E. C. Ferrara
  13. N. Garver-Daniels
  14. P. A. Gentile
  15. M. L. Jones
  16. M. T. Lam
  17. D. R. Lorimer
  18. R. S. Lynch
  19. M. A. McLaughlin
  20. C. Ng
  21. D. J. Nice
  22. T. T. Pennucci
  23. R. Spiewak
  24. I. H. Stairs
  25. K. Stovall
  26. J. K. Swiggum
  27. W. W. Zhu

Contributions

The creation of the NANOGrav 12.5-yr data set was made possible through extensive observations and pulsar-timing activities conducted by all the authors. H.T.C. was responsible for the NANOGrav-adjacent concentrated observing campaigns and the majority of this manuscript’s contents. H.T.C., E.F., S.M.R. and P.B.D. were responsible for the extended J0740+6620 data analysis (the merging of NANOGrav and conjunction-phase observations) and modelling effort. E.F. was responsible for much of the initial work on J0740+6620 that informed the supplementary observing proposals, and for the development of the gridding code that yielded both the mass and inclination credibility intervals and Fig.2.

Corresponding author

Correspondence toH. T. Cromartie.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review informationNature Astronomy thanks John Antoniadis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Cromartie, H.T., Fonseca, E., Ransom, S.M.et al. Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar.Nat Astron4, 72–76 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0880-2

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