FAST's first discovery of a millisecond pulsar

China's 500-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) discovered a radio millisecond pulsar (MSP) coincident with the unassociated gamma-ray source 3FGL J0318.1+0252 in the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) point-source list. This is another milestone of FAST.

FAST, world's largest single-dish radio telescope, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has discovered more than 20 new pulsars so far. This first MSP discovery was made by FAST on Feb. 27 and later confirmed by the Fermi-LAT team in reprocessing of Fermi data on April 18th.

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Credit: Pei Wang/NAOC

The Gamma-ray sky map and integrated pulse profiles of the new MSP: Upper panel shows the region of the gamma-ray sky where the new MSP is located. Lower panel a) shows the observed radio pulses in a one-hour tracking observation of FAST. Lower panel b) shows the folded pulses from more than nine years of Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data.

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