Discovery of 13 new gamma-ray pulsars by Einstein@Home volunteers

The 4th Einstein@Home survey for gamma-ray pulsars, or "FGRP4", using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is currently nearing completion. This survey has incorporated many new advances that we learned during our previous investigation of blind search methods. In addition, we were able to utilize the superior "Pass 8" data from the Fermi-LAT team, and search in longer data sets than ever before. In combination, these improvements led to FGRP4 being our most sensitive survey to date.

We are very pleased to be able to announce a first set of results from FGRP4 - the discovery of 13 new gamma-ray pulsars!
Congratulations to:

UW-Madison CAE (USA)
RUElwell (USA)
Delty (USA)
KataJun (Japan)
huwar
Syracuse University (USA)
LLO_LDAS (USA)
PeRu (Czech Republic)
Bryden Kanngiesser (Canada)
fred c (USA)
Gabriel Vasquez
r4p
Greg Dorais (USA)
xio.nyc (Antarctica)
Hung Tran (USA)
Eric Schwartz (USA)
Aurelien FAUCHEUX (France)
Roger (USA)
gramoll (USA)
Rogir (Germany)

This brings the total number of gamma-ray pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home volunteers to 18. Further details and plots of all the new discoveries are available here!

We are currently working very hard to study all of the results from FGRP4, and we are hoping to present these in a series of papers in the near future. For now, as FGRP4 begins to wind down, we are excited to announce the start of our next survey, "FGRPB1". The "B" here stands for "binary"; for the first time, Einstein@Home will be used to also search for gamma-ray pulsars in orbits with companion stars.

Thank you to everyone participating in Einstein@Home, your contribution has enabled these fantastic discoveries!

Holger Pletsch, Project Scientist and Research Group Leader

Comments

Kavanagh
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Discovery of 13 new gamma-ray pulsars by Einstein@Home volunteer

Hurrah!

Richard

AgentB
AgentB
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Wunderbar! See List of

Wunderbar!

See List of GRPs - just updated - out of only 201 total, E@H has bagged 18.

Mike Hewson
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Wow ! Congrats to all !

Wow ! Congrats to all ! :-)

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Tiers Jean-Francois
Tiers Jean-Francois
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Congratulations to all JF

Congratulations to all
JF

Jasper
Jasper
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So nice to see scientific

So nice to see scientific results from this distributed computing effort.
Congrats to all who participate(d)!

hoarfrost
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Great news! First graphic

Great news!

First graphic in Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Discoveries in Fermi-LAT Data may be unclear.

Mike Hewson
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RE: Great news! First

Quote:

Great news!

First graphic in Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Discoveries in Fermi-LAT Data may be unclear.


Yeah. It's a cumulative graph. You have to stare at it for a bit to realise that E@H has found about 1 in 3 of all known gamma pulsars thus far.

On the upside the plots have made me realise another point ( admittedly an obvious DOH ! ) that the emission is not well collimated in phase/angle. I say that because one is introduced to the topic of pulsars with the rotating light-house beam idea, but the spray is quite wide really and would be quite poor if a terrestrial light-house did that. For most there is easily one third of the cycle emitting above baseline. Now that's a neighbourhood that really fizzles !

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) The other thing that strikes me is the integration times : is that of order ~1500 -> 2000 days ? And still we pick up the pattern from so few gammas with respect to all those rotations. That is the supercomputer that E@H is ! :-)

( late edit ) I note our institutional colleagues helping out. Of particular attention I point to LLO_LDAS, involved in two discoveries ( late 2014 analysis ) , a cluster of 1300 AMD Quad core Opterons running 64 bit Linux ( ? Redhat-ish ). That's gotta be from Livingston LIGO ie. LIGO Data Analysis System.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Anonymous

This my first notice from

This my first notice from project, and it tremendous! Very good! Congratulations everyone who did this :~)

Anonymous

Nice! Congrats to all :-)

Nice! Congrats to all :-)

KLiK
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Nice one...so, I'd suggest a

Nice one...so, I'd suggest a next step for E@h to talk to Astronomical society about naming those pulsars with the names suggested by users which found them...it would bring so many more donator of computational time, if they could have a pulsar named after their selection (their name, family name, name of a loved one, or sthg)...
;)

hoarfrost
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RE: RE: Great

Quote:
Quote:

Great news!

First graphic in Einstein@Home Gamma-ray Pulsar Discoveries in Fermi-LAT Data may be unclear.


Yeah. It's a cumulative graph. You have to stare at it for a bit to realise that E@H has found about 1 in 3 of all known gamma pulsars thus far.


If I understood right (by numbers on vertical axis), this graph - cumulative for all pulsars founded in project - radio and gamma. But in header - "Timeline of gamma-ray pulsars ...".

Gary Roberts
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RE: If I understood right

Quote:
If I understood right (by numbers on vertical axis), this graph - cumulative for all pulsars founded in project - radio and gamma. But in header - "Timeline of gamma-ray pulsars ...".


No the numbers on the vertical axis refer only to GRP. It looks like about 35 were known prior to Atlas finding some (two small jumps within the first shaded area) and then more over a period by E@H right up to the current quite big batch of finds.

No doubt the first ~35 were found by the original 'owners' of the data before E@H got involved :-).

Cheers,
Gary.

tbret
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Congratulations!!! Wow and

Congratulations!!!

Wow and stuff!

A think a "Snoopy dance" is called-for and completely excusable.

This continues to prove that this DC project is neither wasting our time or our money.

Congratulations again to those who made a real. brand new, discovery!

Maximilian Mieth
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Congratulations to the

Congratulations to the scientists and volunteers! Very nice!

hoarfrost
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RE: RE: If I understood

Quote:
Quote:
If I understood right (by numbers on vertical axis), this graph - cumulative for all pulsars founded in project - radio and gamma. But in header - "Timeline of gamma-ray pulsars ...".

No the numbers on the vertical axis refer only to GRP. It looks like about 35 were known prior to Atlas finding some (two small jumps within the first shaded area) and then more over a period by E@H right up to the current quite big batch of finds.

No doubt the first ~35 were found by the original 'owners' of the data before E@H got involved :-).


And this is unclear.
Graph with more detailed caption and separate areas for Einstein@Home search and non-@Home - may by clearer.

Sasa Jovicic
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Congratulations !!!

Congratulations !!!

Chris S
Chris S
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Well done guys :-)

Well done guys :-)

Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)

Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now

Olivier Husser
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ðŸ‘ðŸ‘👠keep on working !

ðŸ‘ðŸ‘👠keep on working !

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
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RE: And this is

Quote:

And this is unclear.
Graph with more detailed caption and separate areas for Einstein@Home search and non-@Home - may by clearer.

This plot is counting gamma-ray-pulsar discoveries only from blind searches in Fermi/LAT data. More gamma ray pulsars (= pulsars showing pulsed gamma ray emissions) were found by looking at known radio pulsars (and then you know the period and period derivative(s) already to high precision!) and then also detecting pulsed gamma ray emissions from that source (with the same period).

Blind searches like the ones on E@H are much harder:

- you take a suspect source, e.g. from the Fermi source catalog (so in this case you know something is emitting gamma rays, and you might even tell from the collected data that it looks like a neutron star), but the sources have comparatively uncertain sky positions (the angular resolution of Fermi/LAT is not spectacular).

- then you have to guess the real sky position and spin period and period derivatives to a high precision and check for a signal in the data.

- for sources in binary systems, you also have to guess the right orbital parameters of the system, making the problem even more computationally challenging. This is what our latest Fermi search on E@H is doing

Héctor VII
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Happy news, well done!

Happy news, well done!

AgentB
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RE: Blind searches like

Quote:


Blind searches like the ones on E@H are much harder:

- you take a suspect source, e.g. from the Fermi source catalog

Thanks HB, i was thinking about this a little over the last few days.

When blind searching - do we use at all the data since 2008 when Fermi was launched?

I guess for the new ones there are "maybe, if we had a few more data points..." , if so, do we have plans to follow-up on them as new data arrives?

Looking at the pulse profiles - they are so many different shapes, no two the same. Is this variety typical a) for GRPs? and b) our common garden radio pulsars?

hoarfrost
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RE: RE: And this is

Quote:
Quote:

And this is unclear.
Graph with more detailed caption and separate areas for Einstein@Home search and non-@Home - may by clearer.

This plot is counting gamma-ray-pulsar discoveries only from blind searches in Fermi/LAT data. More gamma ray pulsars (= pulsars showing pulsed gamma ray emissions) were found by looking at known radio pulsars (and then you know the period and period derivative(s) already to high precision!) and then also detecting pulsed gamma ray emissions from that source (with the same period).

Blind searches like the ones on E@H are much harder:

- you take a suspect source, e.g. from the Fermi source catalog (so in this case you know something is emitting gamma rays, and you might even tell from the collected data that it looks like a neutron star), but the sources have comparatively uncertain sky positions (the angular resolution of Fermi/LAT is not spectacular).

- then you have to guess the real sky position and spin period and period derivatives to a high precision and check for a signal in the data.

- for sources in binary systems, you also have to guess the right orbital parameters of the system, making the problem even more computationally challenging. This is what our latest Fermi search on E@H is doing


Bikeman, thank you for explanation! What you say about scientific significance of gamma-pulsars finded in Einstein@Home?

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
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RE: When blind searching -

Quote:

When blind searching - do we use at all the data since 2008 when Fermi was launched?

There is a publication that focuses on one of the discovered pulsars which has lots of interesting info in it: PSR J1906+0722: An Elusive Gamma-Ray Pulsar. Chapter 2.1 has this to say: "In the blind search we analyzed Fermi -LAT data recorded between 2008 August 4 and 2014 April 6. "

Quote:

I guess for the new ones there are "maybe, if we had a few more data points..." , if so, do we have plans to follow-up on them as new data arrives?
Looking at the pulse profiles - they are so many different shapes, no two the same. Is this variety typical a) for GRPs? and b) our common garden radio pulsars?

I'm a scientific software engineers, not a physicist, so there will be other people around here who are more qualified to answer these questions. But FWIW, the Fermi satellite and the LAT instrument could theoretically, AFAIK, keep working for years to come, its only limiting consumable seems to be the attention of people responsible for funding ;-) (and every discovery made with Fermi data might help to prolong its life, or increase the chances for a successor mission). As long as new data is pouring in, scientists will, IMHO, always try to look again at "weak" candidates from previous searches.

Bikeman (Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein)
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RE: Bikeman, thank you for

Quote:

Bikeman, thank you for explanation! What you say about scientific significance of gamma-pulsars finded in Einstein@Home?

Again, there are people much better qualified than me to answer this question, but anyway, IMHO, the true scientific significance of most discoveries of astrophysical objects can only be known some years after the discovery, as scientists will have studied the new objects in more detail. There are not that many pulsars known (and even fewer gamma-ray pulsars), so any new such object is potentially important. Finding objects with a new method also has the advantage of making the population of known objects more representative of the actual population: if we would discover pulsars only by radio astronomy, we could not claim to know anything about radio-quiet pulsars, not even their existence.

See also thesecond to last paragraph of the paper that I cited in the previous message for the scientific significace : http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.00779v1.pdf

Apart from that, the success of this search is a powerful demonstration of the capabilities of the search method in particular and volunteer computing in general.

Jeroen
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I am glad that more gamma-ray

I am glad that more gamma-ray pulsars have been discovered. Congratulations to all involved!