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Abstract We report the discovery of CHIME J1634+44, a long-period radio transient (LPT) unique for two aspects: it is the first known LPT to emit fully circularly polarized radio bursts, and it is the first LPT with a significant spin-up. Given that high circular polarization (>90%) has been observed in FRB 20201124A and in some giant pulses of PSR B1937+21, we discuss the implications of the high circular polarization of CHIME J1634+44 and conclude its emission mechanism is likely to be “pulsar-like.” While CHIME J1634+44 has a pulse period of 841 s, its burst arrival patterns are indicative of a secondary 4206 s period, probably associated with binary activity. The timing properties suggest it has a significantly negative period derivative of $\dot{P}=-9.03\left(0.11\right)\times {10}^{-12}$s s⁻¹. Few systems have been known to spin up, most notably transitional millisecond pulsars and cataclysmic binaries, both of which seem unlikely progenitors for CHIME J1634+44. If the period was only associated with the spin of the object, then the spin-up is likely generated by accretion of material from a companion. If, however, the radio pulse period and the orbital period are locked, as appears to be the case for two other LPTs, the spin-up of CHIME J1634+44 could be driven by gravitational-wave radiation. 

We present a 34 yr timing solution of the redback pulsar system Terzan 5A (Ter5A). Ter5A, also known as B1744−24A or J1748−2446A, has a 11.56 ms pulse period, a ~0.1 Msun dwarf companion star, and an orbital period of 1.82 hr. Ter5A displays highly variable eclipses and orbital perturbations. Using new timing techniques, we have determined a phase-connected timing solution for this system over 34 yr. This is the longest ever published for a redback pulsar. We find that the pulsar’s spin variability is much larger than most globular cluster pulsars. In fact, of the nine redback pulsars with published or in-preparation long-term timing solutions, Ter5A is by far the noisiest. We see no evidence of strong correlations between orbital and spin variability of the pulsar. We also find that long-term astrometric timing measurements are likely too contaminated by this variability to be usable, and therefore they require careful short-term timing to determine reasonable positions. Finally, we measure an orbital period contraction of  −2.5(3) x 10^-13, which is likely dominated by the general relativistic orbital decay of the system. The effects of the orbital variability due to the redback nature of the pulsar are not needed to explain the observed orbital period derivative, but they are constrained to less than ~30% of the observed value. 

Abstract Globular clusters (GCs) are particularly efficient at forming millisecond pulsars. Among these pulsars, about half lack a companion star, a significantly higher fraction than in the Galactic field. This fraction increases further in some of the densest GCs, especially those that have undergone core collapse, suggesting that dynamical interaction processes play a key role. For the first time, we createN-body models that reproduce the ratio of single-to-binary pulsars in Milky Way–like GCs. We focus especially on NGC 6752, a typical core-collapsed cluster with many observed millisecond pulsars. Previous studies suggested that an increased rate of neutron star binary disruption in the densest clusters could explain the overabundance of single pulsars in these systems. Here, we demonstrate that binary disruption is ineffective and instead we propose that two additional dynamical processes play dominant roles: (1) tidal disruption of main-sequence stars by neutron stars and (2) gravitational collapse of heavy white dwarf binary merger remnants. Neutron stars formed through these processes may also be associated with fast radio bursts similar to those observed recently in an extragalactic GC. 

Abstract Precise localizations of a small number of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) have enabled multiwavelength follow-up observations revealing diverse local environments. However, the 2%–3% of FRB sources that are observed to repeat may not be representative of the full population. Here we use the VLBI capabilities of the full CHIME Outrigger array for the first time to localize a nearby (40 Mpc), bright (kJy), and apparently one-off FRB source, FRB 20250316A, to its environment on 13 pc scales. We use optical and radio observations to place deep constraints on associated transient emission and the properties of its local environment. We place a 5σupper limit ofL_{9.9 GHz} < 2.1 × 10²⁵erg s⁻¹Hz⁻¹on spatially coincident radio emission, a factor of 100 lower than any known compact persistent radio source associated with an FRB. Our Keck Cosmic Webb Imager observations allow us to characterize the gas density, metallicity, nature of gas ionization, dust extinction, and star formation rate through emission line fluxes. We leverage the exceptional brightness and proximity of this source to place deep constraints on the repetition of FRB 20250316A and find that it is inconsistent with all well-studied repeaters given the nondetection of bursts at lower spectral energies. We explore the implications of a measured offset of 190 ± 20 pc from the center of the nearest star formation region in the context of progenitor channels. FRB 20250316A marks the beginning of an era of routine localizations for one-off FRBs on tens of milliarcseconds scales, enabling large-scale studies of their local environments. 

Abstract Based on the rate of change of its orbital period, PSR J2043+1711 has a substantial peculiar acceleration of 3.5 ± 0.8 mm s^–1yr^–1, which deviates from the acceleration predicted by equilibrium Milky Way (MW) models at a 4σlevel. The magnitude of the peculiar acceleration is too large to be explained by disequilibrium effects of the MW interacting with orbiting dwarf galaxies (∼1 mm s^–1yr^–1), and too small to be caused by period variations due to the pulsar being a redback. We identify and examine two plausible causes for the anomalous acceleration: a stellar flyby, and a long-period orbital companion. We identify a main-sequence star in Gaia DR3 and Pan-STARRS DR2 with the correct mass, distance, and on-sky position to potentially explain the observed peculiar acceleration. However, the star and the pulsar system have substantially different proper motions, indicating that they are not gravitationally bound. However, it is possible that this is an unrelated star that just happens to be located near J2043+1711 along our line of sight (chance probability of 1.6%). Therefore, we also constrain possible orbital parameters for a circumbinary companion in a hierarchical triple system with J2043+1711; the changes in the spindown rate of the pulsar are consistent with an outer object that has an orbital period of 60 kyr, a companion mass of 0.3M_⊙(indicative of a white dwarf or low-mass star), and a semimajor axis of 1900 au. Continued timing and/or future faint optical observations of J2043+1711 may eventually allow us to differentiate between these scenarios. 

Abstract The Fourier domain acceleration search (FDAS) is an effective technique for detecting faint binary pulsars in large radio astronomy data sets. This paper quantifies the sensitivity impact of reducing numerical precision in the graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated FDAS pipeline of the AstroAccelerate (AA) software package. The prior implementation used IEEE-754 single-precision in the entire binary pulsar detection pipeline, spending a large fraction of the runtime computing GPU-accelerated fast Fourier transforms. AA has been modified to use bfloat16 (and IEEE-754 double-precision to provide a “gold standard” comparison) within the Fourier domain convolution section of the FDAS routine. Approximately 20,000 synthetic pulsar filterbank files representing binary pulsars were generated using SIGPROC with a range of physical parameters. They have been processed using bfloat16, single-precision, and double-precision convolutions. All bfloat16 peaks are within 3% of the predicted signal-to-noise ratio of their corresponding single-precision peaks. Of 14,971 “bright” single-precision fundamental peaks above a power of 44.982 (our experimentally measured highest noise value), 14,602 (97.53%) have a peak in the same acceleration and frequency bin in the bfloat16 output plane, while in the remaining 369 the nearest peak is located in the adjacent acceleration bin. There is no bin drift measured between the single- and double-precision results. The bfloat16 version of FDAS achieves a speedup of approximately 1.6× compared to single-precision. A comparison between AA and the PRESTO software package is presented using observations collected with the GMRT of PSR J1544+4937, a 2.16 ms black widow pulsar in a 2.8 hr compact orbit. 

Abstract Close encounters between neutron stars and main-sequence stars occur in globular clusters and may lead to various outcomes. Here we study encounters resulting in the tidal disruption of the star. Using N -body models, we predict the typical stellar masses in these disruptions and the dependence of the event rate on the host cluster properties. We find that tidal disruption events occur most frequently in core-collapsed globular clusters and that roughly 25% of the disrupted stars are merger products (i.e., blue straggler stars). Using hydrodynamic simulations, we model the tidal disruptions themselves (over timescales of days) to determine the mass bound to the neutron star and the properties of the accretion disks formed. In general, we find roughly 80%–90% of the initial stellar mass becomes bound to the neutron star following disruption. Additionally, we find that neutron stars receive impulsive kicks of up to about 20 km s −1 as a result of the asymmetry of unbound ejecta; these kicks place these neutron stars on elongated orbits within their host cluster, with apocenter distances well outside the cluster core. Finally, we model the evolution of the (hypercritical) accretion disks on longer timescales (days to years after disruption) to estimate the accretion rate onto the neutron stars and accompanying spin-up. As long as ≳1% of the bound mass accretes onto the neutron star, millisecond spin periods can be attained. We argue the growing numbers of isolated millisecond pulsars observed in globular clusters may have formed, at least in part, through this mechanism. In the case of significant mass growth, some of these neutron stars may collapse to form low-mass (≲3 M ⊙ ) black holes. 

Abstract Noise characterization for pulsar-timing applications accounts for interstellar dispersion by assuming a known frequency dependence of the delay it introduces in the times of arrival (TOAs). However, calculations of this delay suffer from misestimations due to other chromatic effects in the observations. The precision in modeling dispersion is dependent on the observed bandwidth. In this work, we calculate the offsets in infinite-frequency TOAs due to misestimations in the modeling of dispersion when using varying bandwidths at the Green Bank Telescope. We use a set of broadband observations of PSR J1643−1224, a pulsar with unusual chromatic timing behavior. We artificially restricted these observations to a narrowband frequency range, then used both the broad- and narrowband data sets to calculate residuals with a timing model that does not account for time variations in the dispersion. By fitting the resulting residuals to a dispersion model and comparing the fits, we quantify the error introduced in the timing parameters due to using a reduced frequency range. Moreover, by calculating the autocovariance function of the parameters, we obtained a characteristic timescale over which the dispersion misestimates are correlated. For PSR J1643−1224, which has one of the highest dispersion measures (DM) in the NANOGrav pulsar timing array, we find that the infinite-frequency TOAs suffer from a systematic offset of ∼22μs due to incomplete frequency sampling, with correlations over about one month. For lower-DM pulsars, the offset is ∼7μs. This error quantification can be used to provide more robust noise modeling in the NANOGrav data, thereby increasing the sensitivity and improving the parameter estimation in gravitational wave searches. 

Abstract Pulsar timing array observations have found evidence for an isotropic gravitational-wave background with the Hellings–Downs angular correlations between pulsar pairs. This interpretation hinges on the measured shape of the angular correlations, which is predominantly quadrupolar under general relativity. Here we explore a more flexible parameterization: we expand the angular correlations into a sum of Legendre polynomials and use a Bayesian analysis to constrain their coefficients with the 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). When including Legendre polynomials with multipolesℓ≥ 2, we only find a significant signal in the quadrupole with an amplitude consistent with general relativity and nonzero at the ∼95% confidence level and a Bayes factor of 200. When we include multipolesℓ≤ 1, the Bayes factor evidence for quadrupole correlations decreases by more than an order of magnitude due to evidence for a monopolar signal at approximately 4 nHz, which has also been noted in previous analyses of the NANOGrav 15 yr data. Further work needs to be done in order to better characterize the properties of this monopolar signal and its effect on the evidence for quadrupolar angular correlations. 

Abstract Terzan 5 is a rich globular cluster within the galactic bulge containing 39 known millisecond pulsars, the largest known population of any globular cluster. These faint pulsars do not have sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) to measure reliable flux density or polarization information from individual observations in general. We combined over 5.2 days of archival data, at 1500 and 2000 MHz, taken with the Green Bank Telescope over the past 12 years. We created high-S/N profiles for 32 of the pulsars and determined precise rotation measures (RMs) for 28. We used the RMs, pulsar positions, and dispersion measures to map the projected parallel component of the Galactic magnetic field toward the cluster. The 〈B_∣∣〉 shows a rough gradient of ∼6 nG arcsec⁻¹(∼160 nG pc⁻¹) or, fractionally, a change of ∼20% in the R.A. direction across the cluster, implying Galactic magnetic field variability at sub-parsec scales. We also measured average flux densitiesS_νfor the pulsars, ranging from ∼10μJy to ∼2 mJy, and an average spectral indexα= −1.35, whereS_ν∝ν^α. This spectral index is flatter than most known pulsars, likely a selection effect due to the high frequencies used in pulsar searches to mitigate dispersion and scattering. We used flux densities from each observation to constrain the scintillation properties toward the cluster, finding strong refractive modulation on timescales of months. The inferred pulsar luminosity function is roughly power law, with slope $\left(d\log N\right)/\left(d\log L\right)=-1$at the high-luminosity end. At the low-luminosity end, there are incompleteness effects, implying that Terzan 5 contains many more pulsars.