Identification of the Optical Counterpart of Fermi Black Widow Millisecond Pulsar PSR J1544+4937
Abstract
We report the optical identification of the companion to the Fermi black widow millisecond pulsar PSR J1544+4937. We find a highly variable source on Keck Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer images at the nominal pulsar position, with 2 mag variations over orbital period in the B, g, R, and I bands. The nearly achromatic light curves are difficult to explain with a simply irradiated hemisphere model, and suggest that the optical emission is dominated by a nearly isothermal hot patch on the surface of the companion facing the pulsar. We roughly constrain the distance to PSR J1544+4937 to be between 2 and 5 kpc. A more reliable distance measurement is needed in order to constrain the composition of the companion.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 June 1; accepted 2014 June 30; published 2014 July 23. We thank the referee for helpful comments. S.T. acknowledges support by the NASA grant NNX12AO76G. D.L.K. is supported by the National Science Foundation grant AST-1312822. L.B. and B.W. acknowledge support from the NSF grants PHY 11-25915 and AST 11-09174. A.K.H.K. and T.C.Y. are supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China (Taiwan) through grants 100-2628-M-007-002-MY3, 100-2923-M-007-001-MY3, and 101-2119-M- 008-007-MY3. D.A.P. is supported by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-51296.01-A. We are grateful to S. R. Kulkarni for his help on obtaining Keck data. The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA; the Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. Facilities: Keck:I (LRIS), CFHT (MegaCam)Attached Files
Published - 2041-8205_791_1_L5.pdf
Submitted - 1407.0081v2.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 50189
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20141003-145052222
- NNX12AO76G
- NASA
- AST-1312822
- NSF
- PHY 11-25915
- NSF
- AST 11-09174
- NSF
- 100-2628-M-007-002-MY3
- Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
- 100-2923-M-007-001-MY3
- Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
- 101-2119-M- 008-007-MY3
- Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
- HST-HF-51296.01-A
- NASA Hubble Fellowship
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- Created
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2014-10-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field