The Origin of the Binary Pulsar J0737-3039B
Abstract
Evolutionary scenarios suggest that the progenitor of the new binary pulsar J0737-3039B was a He-star with M > 2.1-2.3 Msun. We show that this case implies that the binary must have a large (>120 km/s) center of mass velocity. However, the location, ~50 pc from the Galactic plane, suggests that the system has, at high likelihood, a significantly smaller center of mass velocity and a progenitor more massive than 2.1 Msun is ruled out (at 97% c.l.). A progenitor mass around 1.45 Msun, involving a new previously unseen gravitational collapse, is kinematically favored. The low mass progenitor is consistent with the recent scintillations based velocity measurement of 66 +/- 15 km/s (and which also rules out the high mass solution at 99% c.l.), and inconsistent with the higher earlier estimates of 141 +/- 8.5 km/s. Direct proper motion measurements, that should be available within a year or so, should better help to distinguish between the two scenarios. The relativistic nature of the system may enable us to use further observations in the more distant future to estimate the radial motion towards us and to nail down the mass of the progenitor.Keywords
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