National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Guizhou Radio Astronomical Observatory, Guizhou University, Guiyang, People's Republic of China.
Nature. 2023 Aug;620(7976):961-964. doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06308-w. Epub 2023 Jun 20.
Spider pulsars are neutron stars that have a companion star in a close orbit. The companion star sheds material to the neutron star, spinning it up to millisecond rotation periods, while the orbit shortens to hours. The companion is eventually ablated and destroyed by the pulsar wind and radiation. Spider pulsars are key for studying the evolutionary link between accreting X-ray pulsars and isolated millisecond pulsars, pulsar irradiation effects and the birth of massive neutron stars. Black widow pulsars in extremely compact orbits (as short as 62 minutes) have companions with masses much smaller than 0.1 M. They may have evolved from redback pulsars with companion masses of about 0.1-0.4 M and orbital periods of less than 1 day. If this is true, then there should be a population of millisecond pulsars with moderate-mass companions and very short orbital periods, but, hitherto, no such system was known. Here we report radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1953+1844 (M71E) that show it to have an orbital period of 53.3 minutes and a companion with a mass of around 0.07 M. It is a faint X-ray source and located 2.5 arcminutes from the centre of the globular cluster M71.
蜘蛛脉冲星是一种伴星在近轨道上的中子星。伴星向中子星输送物质，使其旋转到毫秒级的自转周期，同时轨道缩短到几小时。最终，伴星被脉冲星风辐射侵蚀并摧毁。蜘蛛脉冲星是研究吸积 X 射线脉冲星和孤立毫秒脉冲星之间进化联系、脉冲星辐照效应以及大质量中子星诞生的关键。在极其紧凑的轨道（短至 62 分钟）中运行的黑寡妇脉冲星，其伴星的质量远小于 0.1M。它们可能是由伴星质量约为 0.1-0.4M、轨道周期小于 1 天的红背脉冲星演化而来。如果这是真的，那么应该存在一群具有中等质量伴星和极短轨道周期的毫秒脉冲星，但迄今为止，还没有这样的系统被发现。在这里，我们报告了对二进制毫秒脉冲星 PSR J1953+1844（M71E）的无线电观测，结果表明它的轨道周期为 53.3 分钟，伴星的质量约为 0.07M。它是一个微弱的 X 射线源，位于球状星团 M71 的中心 2.5 角分之外。
