Einstein@Home discovery of four young gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi LAT data

摘要

We report the discovery of four gamma-ray pulsars, detected incomputing-intensive blind searches of data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope(LAT). The pulsars were found using a novel search approach, combiningvolunteer distributed computing via Einstein@Home and methods originallydeveloped in gravitational-wave astronomy. The pulsars PSRs J0554+3107,J1422-6138, J1522-5735, and J1932+1916 are young and energetic, withcharacteristic ages between 35 and 56 kyr and spin-down powers in the range$6\times10^{34}$ - $10^{36}$ erg s$^{-1}$. They are located in the Galacticplane and have rotation rates of less than 10 Hz, among which the 2.1 Hz spinfrequency of PSR J0554+3107 is the slowest of any known gamma-ray pulsar. Fortwo of the new pulsars, we find supernova remnants coincident on the sky anddiscuss the plausibility of such associations. Deep radio follow-upobservations found no pulsations, suggesting that all four pulsars areradio-quiet as viewed from Earth. These discoveries, the first gamma-raypulsars found by volunteer computing, motivate continued blind pulsar searchesof the many other unidentified LAT gamma-ray sources.