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S. M. Ransom (NRAO), J. W. T. Hessels (McGill Univ.), I. H. Stairs (Univ. British Columbia), P. C. C. Freire (NAIC, Arecibo), V. M. Kaspi (McGill Univ.), F. Camilo (Columbia Univ.)
Over the past two years, our team has used the Green Bank Telescope to uncover over 50 new recycled pulsars in the Milky Way globular cluster system, almost doubling the previous number known in the process. The most spectacular example is the rich bulge cluster Terzan 5, which now has at least 32 known pulsars, by far the most of any globular cluster. Searches of several other clusters including NGC6440, NGC6441, NGC6522, NGC6624, and M28 have resulted in several new pulsars each. Since globular clusters are breeding grounds for unique and/or exotic pulsar systems, these new discoveries promise to allow us to probe a wide variety of physics pertaining to the neutron stars, their binary companions and binary formation scenarios, the dynamics of the globular clusters, and the interstellar medium. Several of the new binary pulsars are in rare highly eccentric binaries whose relativistic effects will allow us to constrain the pulsar masses. The new crop of pulsars also contains several of the fastest rotating neutron stars known which constrains the equation of state of matter at supra-nuclear densities.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.