1. A Lower Mass Estimate for PSR J0348+0432 Based on CHIME/Pulsar Precision Timing
- Author
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Saffer, Alexander, Fonseca, Emmanuel, Ransom, Scott, Stairs, Ingrid, Lynch, Ryan, Good, Deborah, Masui, Kiyoshi W., McKee, James W., Meyers, Bradley W., Patil, Swarali Shivraj, and Tan, Chia Min
- Subjects
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena - Abstract
The binary pulsar J0348+0432 was previously shown to have a mass of approximately 2\,${\rm M_\odot}$, based on the combination of radial-velocity and model-dependent mass parameters derived from high-resolution optical spectroscopy of its white-dwarf companion. We present follow-up timing observations that combine archival observations with data acquired by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) pulsar instrument. We find that the inclusion of CHIME/Pulsar data yields an improved measurement of general-relativistic orbital decay in the system that falls within 1.2 $\sigma$ of the original values published by Antoniadis et al. (2013) while being roughly 6 times more precise due to the extended baseline. When we combine this new orbital evolution rate with the mass ratio determined from optical spectroscopy, we determine a pulsar mass of 1.806(37)\,${\rm M_\odot}$. For the first time for this pulsar, timing alone significantly constrains the pulsar mass. We explain why the new mass for the pulsar is $10\%$ lower and discuss how the mis-modeling of the initial observations of the white dwarf companion likely led to an inaccurate determination of the pulsar mass., Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letters, 12 pages, 7 figures, 1 table
- Published
- 2024