Einstein@Home aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 193 countries, to search for new neutron stars using data from electromagnetic and gravitational-wave detectors. This paper presents a detailed description of the search for new radio pulsars using Pulsar ALFA survey data from the Arecibo Observatory. The enormous computing power allows this search to cover a new region of parameter space; it can detect pulsars in binary systems with orbital periods as short as 11 minutes. We also describe the first Einstein@Home discovery, the 40.8 Hz isolated pulsar PSR J2007+2722, and provide a full timing model. PSR J2007+2722's pulse profile is remarkably wide with emission over almost the entire spin period. This neutron star is most likely a disrupted recycled pulsar, about as old as its characteristic spin-down age of 404 Myr. However, there is a small chance that it was born recently, with a low magnetic field. If so, upper limits on the X-ray flux suggest but cannot prove that PSR J2007+2722 is at least ∼100 kyr old. In the future, we expect that the massive computing power provided by volunteers should enable many additional radio pulsar discoveries. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
CITATION STYLE
Allen, B., Knispel, B., Cordes, J. M., Deneva, J. S., Hessels, J. W. T., Anderson, D., … Zhu, W. (2013). The Einstein@Home search for radio pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 discovery. Astrophysical Journal, 773(2). https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/91
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