Probing the presence of a single or binary black hole in the globular cluster NGC 6752 with pulsar dynamics

Abstract

The five millisecond pulsars that inhabit NGC 6752 display locations or accelerations that are quite unusual compared to all other pulsars known in globular clusters. In particular PSR-A, a binary pulsar, lives in the cluster halo, while PSR-B and PSR-E, located in the core, show remarkably high negative spin derivatives. This is suggestive that some uncommon dynamical process is at play in the cluster core that we attribute to the presence of a massive perturber. We here investigate whether a single intermediate-mass black hole, lying on the extrapolation of the Mass versus Sigma relation observed in galaxy spheroids, or a less massive binary consisting of two black holes could play the requested role. To this purpose we simulated binary-binary encounters involving PSR-A, its companion star, and the black hole(s). Various scenarios are discussed in detail. In our close 4-body encounters, a black hole-black hole binary may attract on a long-term stable orbit a millisecond pulsar. Timing measurements on the captured satellite-pulsar, member of a hierarchical triplet, could unambiguously unveil the presence of a black hole(s) in the core of a globular cluster.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journa