Tight Constraint on Photon Mass from Pulsar Spindown
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Publication Title
Astrophysical Journal
Volume
842
Issue
1
Abstract
Pulsars are magnetized rotating compact objects. They spin down due to magnetic dipole radiation and wind emission. If a photon has nonzero mass, the spin-down rate will be lower than in the zero-mass case. We show that an upper limit of the photon mass, i.e., mγ ≲ h/Pc2, may be placed if a pulsar with period P is observed to spin down. Recently, a white dwarf (WD)-M dwarf binary, AR Scorpii, was discovered to emit pulsed broadband emission. The spin-down luminosity of the WD can comfortably power non-thermal radiation from the system. Applying our results to the WD pulsar with P = 117 s, we obtain a stringent upper limit of the photon mass between Mγ < 6.3 × 10-50 g, assuming a vacuum dipole spindown, and Mγ < 9.6 × 10-50 g, assuming spindown due to a fully developed pulsar wind. © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
File Format
File Size
519 KB
Language
english
Repository Citation
Yang, Y.,
Zhang, B.
(2017).
Tight Constraint on Photon Mass from Pulsar Spindown.
Astrophysical Journal, 842(1),
http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa74de
