Eight Millisecond Pulsars Discovered in the Arecibo PALFA Survey

Abstract

Abstract We report on eight millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in binary systems discovered with the Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (PALFA) pulsar survey. Phase-coherent timing solutions derived from 2.5–5 yr of observations carried out at the Arecibo and Jodrell Bank observatories are provided. PSR J1921+1929 is a 2.65 ms pulsar in a 39.6 day orbit for which we detect γ-ray pulsations in archival Fermi data. PSR J1928+1245 is a very low-mass-function system with an orbital period of 3.3 hr that belongs to the non-eclipsing black widow population. We also present PSR J1932+1756, the longest-orbital-period (41.5 days) intermediate-mass binary pulsar known to date. In light of the numerous discoveries of binary MSPs over the past years, we characterize the Galactic distribution of known MSP binaries in terms of binary class. Our results support and strengthen previous claims that the scatter in the Galactic scale height distribution correlates inversely with the binary mass function. We provide evidence of observational biases against detecting the most recycled pulsars near the Galactic plane, which overestimates the scale height of lighter systems. A possible bimodality in the mass function of MSPs with massive white dwarfs is also reported.