Alien Registration- Stairs, George D. (Blaine, Aroostook County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/26108/thumbnail.jp

PSR J1453+1902 and the radio luminosities of solitary versus binary millisecond pulsars

We present 3 yr of timing observations for PSR J1453+1902, a 5.79-ms pulsar discovered during a 430-MHz drift-scan survey with the Arecibo telescope. Our observations show that PSR J1453+1902 is solitary and has a proper motion of 8(2) mas/yr. At the nominal distance of 1.2 kpc estimated from the pulsar's dispersion measure, this corresponds to a transverse speed of 46(11) km/s, typical of the millisecond pulsar population. We analyse the current sample of 55 millisecond pulsars in the Galactic disk and revisit the question of whether the luminosities of isolated millisecond pulsars are different from their binary counterparts. We demonstrate that the apparent differences in the luminosity distributions seen in samples selected from 430-MHz surveys can be explained by small-number statistics and observational selection biases. An examination of the sample from 1400-MHz surveys shows no differences in the distributions. The simplest conclusion from the current data is that the spin, kinematic, spatial and luminosity distributions of isolated and binary millisecond pulsars are consistent with a single homogeneous population.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, accepted for publication by MNRA

CoRoT measures solar-like oscillations and granulation in stars hotter than the Sun

Oscillations of the Sun have been used to understand its interior structure. The extension of similar studies to more distant stars has raised many difficulties despite the strong efforts of the international community over the past decades. The CoRoT (Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits) satellite, launched in December 2006, has now measured oscillations and the stellar granulation signature in three main sequence stars that are noticeably hotter than the sun. The oscillation amplitudes are about 1.5 times as large as those in the Sun; the stellar granulation is up to three times as high. The stellar amplitudes are about 25% below the theoretic values, providing a measurement of the nonadiabaticity of the process ruling the oscillations in the outer layers of the stars.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Changes in Polarization Position Angle across the Eclipse in the Double Pulsar System

We investigate the changes in polarization position angle in radiation from pulsar A around the eclipse in the Double Pulsar system PSR J0737-3039A/B at the 20 cm and 50 cm wavelengths using the Parkes 64-m telescope. The changes are ~2\sigma\ during and shortly after the eclipse at 20 cm but less significant at 50 cm. We show that the changes in position angle during the eclipse can be modelled by differential synchrotron absorption in the eclipse regions. Position angle changes after the eclipse are interpreted as Faraday rotation in the magnetotail of pulsar B. Implied charge densities are consistent with the Goldreich-Julian density, suggesting that the particle energies in the magnetotail are mildly relativistic.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Strong field effects on binary systems in Einstein-aether theory

"Einstein-aether" theory is a generally covariant theory of gravity containing a dynamical preferred frame. This article continues an examination of effects on the motion of binary pulsar systems in this theory, by incorporating effects due to strong fields in the vicinity of neutron star pulsars. These effects are included through an effective approach, by treating the compact bodies as point particles with nonstandard, velocity dependent interactions parametrized by dimensionless "sensitivities". Effective post-Newtonian equations of motion for the bodies and the radiation damping rate are determined. More work is needed to calculate values of the sensitivities for a given fluid source, so precise constraints on the theory's coupling constants cannot yet be stated. It is shown, however, that strong field effects will be negligible given current observational uncertainties if the dimensionless couplings are less than roughly 0.01 and two conditions that match the PPN parameters to those of pure general relativity are imposed. In this case, weak field results suffice and imply one further condition on the couplings. Thus, there exists a one-parameter family of Einstein-aether theories with "small-enough" couplings that passes all current observational tests. No conclusion can yet be reached for large couplings.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure; v2: fixed error in Eqn. (70) and resulting bounds on c'

Generic features of Einstein-Aether black holes

We reconsider spherically symmetric black hole solutions in Einstein-Aether theory with the condition that this theory has identical PPN parameters as those for general relativity, which is the main difference from the previous research. In contrast with previous study, we allow superluminal propagation of a spin-0 Aether-gravity wave mode. As a result, we obtain black holes having a spin-0 "horizon" inside an event horizon. We allow a singularity at a spin-0 "horizon" since it is concealed by the event horizon. If we allow such a configuration, the kinetic term of the Aether field can be large enough for black holes to be significantly different from Schwarzschild black holes with respect to ADM mass, innermost stable circular orbit, Hawking temperature, and so on. We also discuss whether or not the above features can be seen in more generic vector-tensor theories.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, basic equations and their analytic arguments are adde

VLBI astrometry of PSR J2222-0137: a pulsar distance measured to 0.4% accuracy

The binary pulsar J2222-0137 is an enigmatic system containing a partially recycled millisecond pulsar and a companion of unknown nature. Whilst the low eccentricity of the system favors a white dwarf companion, an unusual double neutron star system is also a possibility, and optical observations will be able to distinguish between these possibilities. In order to allow the absolute luminosity (or upper limit) of the companion object to be properly calibrated, we undertook astrometric observations with the Very Long Baseline Array to constrain the system distance via a measurement of annual geometric parallax. With these observations, we measure the parallax of the J2222-0137 system to be 3.742 +0.013 -0.016 milliarcseconds, yielding a distance of 267.3 +1.2 -0.9 pc, and measure the transverse velocity to be 57.1 +0.3 -0.2 km/s. Fixing these parameters in the pulsar timing model made it possible to obtain a measurement of Shapiro delay and hence the system inclination, which shows that the system is nearly edge-on (sin i = 0.9985 +/- 0.0005). Furthermore, we were able to detect the orbital motion of J2222-0137 in our VLBI observations and measure the longitude of ascending node. The VLBI astrometry yields the most accurate distance obtained for a radio pulsar to date, and is furthermore the most accurate parallax for any radio source obtained at "low" radio frequencies (below ~5 GHz, where the ionosphere dominates the error budget). Using the astrometric results, we show the companion to J2222-0137 will be easily detectable in deep optical observations if it is a white dwarf. Finally, we discuss the implications of this measurement for future ultra-high-precision astrometry, in particular in support of pulsar timing arrays.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap