Timing of Eight Binary Millisecond Pulsars Found with Arecibo in Fermi-LAT Unidentified Sources

Abstract

We present timing solutions for eight binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs) discovered by searching unidentified Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) source positions with the 327 MHz receiver of the Arecibo 305 m radio telescope. Five of the pulsars are 'spiders' with orbital periods shorter than 8.1 hr. Three of these are in 'black widow' systems (with degenerate companions of 0.02–0.03 M⊙), one is in a 'redback' system (with a non-degenerate companion of gsim0.3 M⊙), and one (J1908+2105) is an apparent middle-ground case between the two observational classes. The remaining three pulsars have white dwarf companions and longer orbital periods. With the initially derived radio timing solutions, we detected γ-ray pulsations from all MSPs and extended the timing solutions using photons from the full Fermi mission, thus confirming the identification of these MSPs with the Fermi-LAT sources. The radio emission of the redback is eclipsed during 50% of its orbital period, which is typical for this kind of system. Two of the black widows exhibit radio eclipses lasting for 10%–20% of the orbit, while J1908+2105 eclipses for 40% of the orbit. We investigate an apparent link between gamma-ray emission and a short orbital period among known binary MSPs in the Galactic disk, and conclude that selection effects cannot be ruled out as the cause. Based on this analysis we outline how the likelihood of new MSP discoveries can be improved in ongoing and future pulsar searches.