TY - JOUR

T1 - A pulsar in a binary with a compact object in the mass gap between neutron stars and black holes

AU - Barr, Ewan D.

AU - Dutta, Arunima

AU - Freire, Paulo C.C.

AU - Cadelano, Mario

AU - Gautam, Tasha

AU - Kramer, Michael

AU - Pallanca, Cristina

AU - Ransom, Scott M.

AU - Ridolfi, Alessandro

AU - Stappers, Benjamin W.

AU - Tauris, Thomas M.

AU - Krishnan, Vivek Venkatraman

AU - Wex, Norbert

AU - Bailes, Matthew

AU - Behrend, Jan

AU - Buchner, Sarah

AU - Burgay, Marta

AU - Chen, Weiwei

AU - Champion, David J.

AU - Chen, C. H.Rosie

AU - Corongiu, Alessandro

AU - Geyer, Marisa

AU - Men, Y. P.

AU - Padmanabh, Prajwal Voraganti

AU - Possenti, Andrea

N1 - Funding Information: The MeerKAT telescope is operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation, an agency of the Department of Science and Innovation. SARAO acknowledges the ongoing advice and calibration of GPSs by the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA) and the time space reference systems department of the Paris Observatory. Parts of this research were conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), through project CE170100004. MeerTime data are housed on the OzSTAR supercomputer at Swinburne University of Technology. The OzSTAR program receives funding in part from the Astronomy National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) allocation provided by the Australian Government. PTUSE was developed with support from the Australian SKA Office and Swinburne University of Technology. The authors also acknowledge Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie funding to contribute to MeerTime infrastructure. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. The Green Bank Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. TRAPUM observations use the FBFUSE and APSUSE computing clusters for data acquisition, storage, and analysis. These clusters were funded, installed, and operated by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos. esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC; https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/ consortium). Funding for DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. A.C., A.P., A.R., and M.Bu. acknowledge resources from the research grant “iPeska” (principal investigator, A.P.) funded under the INAF national call Prin-SKA/ CTA approved with the Presidential Decree 70/2016. A.P. and A.R. were supported by the Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale–Direzione Generale per la Promozione del Sistema Paese–Progetto di Grande Rilevanza ZA18GR02. S.M.R. is a CIFAR Fellow and is supported by NSF Physics Frontiers Center awards 1430284 and 2020265. E.D.B., A.D., P.C.C.F., M.K., V.V.K., N.W., J.B., W.C., D.J.C., C.-H.R.C., Y.P.M., and P.V.P. acknowledge support from the Max-Planck Society. B.W.S. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement 694745). C.-H.R.C. acknowledges support from the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) grant NS1 under contract 50 OR 2214. C.P. and M.C. acknowledge funding from Italian MIUR throughout the PRIN-2017 grant awarded to the Light-on-Dark project (principal investigator, F. R. Ferraro) through contract PRIN-2017K7REXT. M.G. acknowledges funding from the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

PY - 2024/1/19

Y1 - 2024/1/19

N2 - Some compact objects observed in gravitational wave events have masses in the gap between known neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs). The nature of these mass gap objects is unknown, as is the formation of their host binary systems. We report pulsar timing observations made with the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) of PSR J0514−4002E, an eccentric binary millisecond pulsar in the globular cluster NGC 1851. We found a total binary mass of 3.887 ± 0.004 solar masses (M☉), and multiwavelength observations show that the pulsar’s binary companion is also a compact object. The companion’s mass (2.09 to 2.71 M☉, 95% confidence interval) is in the mass gap, indicating either a very massive NS or a low-mass BH. We propose that the companion formed in a merger between two earlier NSs.

AB - Some compact objects observed in gravitational wave events have masses in the gap between known neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs). The nature of these mass gap objects is unknown, as is the formation of their host binary systems. We report pulsar timing observations made with the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) of PSR J0514−4002E, an eccentric binary millisecond pulsar in the globular cluster NGC 1851. We found a total binary mass of 3.887 ± 0.004 solar masses (M☉), and multiwavelength observations show that the pulsar’s binary companion is also a compact object. The companion’s mass (2.09 to 2.71 M☉, 95% confidence interval) is in the mass gap, indicating either a very massive NS or a low-mass BH. We propose that the companion formed in a merger between two earlier NSs.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85182857859&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.2401.09872

DO - 10.48550/arXiv.2401.09872

M3 - Article

C2 - 38236981

AN - SCOPUS:85182857859

VL - 383

SP - 275

EP - 279

JO - SCIENCE

JF - SCIENCE

SN - 0036-8075

IS - 6680

ER -