GBT22A-486

Verifying the Black Widow Nature of the Shortest Period Candidate to Date

Abstract

A Nature paper this week detailed the discovery of a new "black widow" (BW) pulsar candidate in a hierarchal triple where the inner binary has an orbital period of just 62 minutes. This system challenges formation models for BWs, making proper characterization of the system important given the both evolutionary role BWs play in pulsar recycling and the role they play in efforts to constrain the neutron star equation of state. Early attempts with smaller telescopes to confirm the BW nature of the system by detecting radio pulsations were unsuccessful. We propose to use the GBT and S band receiver to cover two orbits of the inner binary in a new attempt to detect radio pulsations from the BW candidate. Given the interesting nature of this system, many other radio telescopes will surely be attempting similar observations soon; however, they do not have access to S band observations where circumbinary material from the companion can mask the pulsations. This means the GBT is uniquely positioned to rapidly characterize the nature of this system if pulsations are detected.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Kyle Corcoran *	Virginia, University of
Ryan Lynch	Green Bank Observatory
Scott Ransom	National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Virginia, University of

* indicates the PI