A Radio Pulsar Spinning at 716 Hz

Abstract

We have discovered a 716-Hz eclipsing binary radio pulsar in the globular cluster Terzan 5 using the Green Bank Telescope. It is the fastest-spinning neutron star ever found, breaking the 23-year-old record held by the 642-Hz pulsar B1937+21. The difficulty in detecting this pulsar, due to its very low flux density and high eclipse fraction (~40% of the orbit), suggests that even faster-spinning neutron stars exist. If the pulsar has a mass less than 2 Msun, then its radius is constrained by the spin rate to be < 16 km. The short period of this pulsar also constrains models that suggest gravitational radiation, through an r-mode instability, limits the maximum spin frequency of neutron stars.

8 pages, 1 figure. Accepted by Science. Published electronically via Science Express 12 Jan 2006