PSR J1618-3921: a recycled pulsar in an eccentric orbit

Abstract

PSR~J1618$-$3921 is an $11.99$-ms pulsar in a $22.7$-d orbit around a likely low-mass He white dwarf companion, discovered in a survey of the intermediate Galactic latitudes at 1400 MHz conducted with the Parkes radio telescope in the late 1990s. Although PSR~J1618$-$3921 was discovered more than 15 years ago, only limited information has been published about this pulsar which has a surprisingly large orbital eccentricity ($e \simeq 0.027$), considering its high spin frequency and likely small companion mass. The focus of this work is a precise measurement of the spin, astrometric and orbital characteristics of PSR J1618$-$3921. This was done with timing observations made at the Nan\c{c}ay Radio Telescope, from 2009 to 2017. We analyzed the timing data recorded at the Nan\c{c}ay Radio Telescope over several years to characterize the properties of PSR~J1618$-$3921. A rotation ephemeris for this pulsar was obtained by analyzing the times of arrival of the radio pulses at the telescope. We confirm the unusual eccentricity of PSR~J1618$-$3921 and discuss several hypotheses regarding its formation, in the context of other discoveries of recycled pulsars in eccentric orbits.