Identification of Candidate Millisecond Pulsars from Fermi LAT Observations [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.04554


We report our detailed data analysis for 39 $\gamma$-ray sources selected from the 992 unassociated sources in the \textit{Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) third source catalog. The selection criteria, which were set for finding candidate millisecond pulsars (MSPs), are non-variables with curved spectra and $>$5$^{\circ}$ Galactic latitudes. From our analysis, 24 sources were found to be point-like sources not contaminated by background or nearby unknown sources. Three of them, J1544.6$-$1125, J1625.1$-$0021, and J1653.6$-$0158, have been previously studied, indicating that they are likely MSPs. The spectra of J0318.1+0252 and J2053.9+2922 do not have properties similar to that of known $\gamma$-ray MSPs, and we thus suggest that they are not MSPs. Analysis of archival X-ray data for most of the 24 sources were also conducted. Four sources were found with X-ray objects in their error circles, and 16 with no detection. The ratios between the $\gamma$-ray fluxes and X-ray fluxes or flux upper limits are generally lower than those of the known $\gamma$-ray MSPs, suggesting that if the $\gamma$-ray sources are MSPs, none of the X-ray objects are the counterparts. Deep X-ray or radio observations of these sources are needed in order to identify their MSP nature.

Read this paper on arXiv…

X. Dai, Z. Wang, V. Jithesh, et. al.
Tue, 16 Feb 16
26/71

Comments: 12 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in RAA