Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on the Millimetre Flux of the Crab Pulsar

Yilun Guan; Sigurd Naess; Ian Niebres; Louis Branch; Adam D. Hincks; Hongbo Cai; Allen Foster; Carlos Hervías-Caimapo; John P. Hughes; Cristóbal Sifón; Edward J. Wollack

arXiv · 2509.11960

Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on the Millimetre Flux of the Crab Pulsar

Yilun Guan·Sigurd Naess·Ian Niebres·Louis Branch·Adam D. Hincks·Hongbo Cai·Allen Foster·Carlos Hervías-Caimapo·John P. Hughes·Cristóbal Sifón·Edward J. Wollack

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Abstract

Millimeter-wave observations of pulsars, while crucial for understanding their emission mechanisms, remain scarce. We demonstrate that high-precision cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments like the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), though designed for cosmology, offer a unique capability for such time-domain science due to their high cadence and broad sky coverage in millimeter bands. While previous ACT searches have focused on transients lasting minutes or longer, we develop and validate analysis methods to search for periodic, millisecond-scale transients, a capability not typically associated with CMB experiments. We describe a phase-resolved mapmaking approach, which leverages the known periodicity of the signal to enhance sensitivity and offers advantages in diagnosing systematic errors. We also introduce a template-based fit to the raw data timestreams that independently validate our results. Applying these methods to estimate the millimeter flux of the Crab Pulsar (PSR B0531+21), we derive 95% confidence upper limits of 4.6 mJy, 4.4 mJy, and 20.7 mJy on the pulsar's period-averaged flux density at 96 GHz, 148 GHz, and 225 GHz, respectively. These constraints fill a gap in our knowledge of the Crab Pulsar's spectral energy distribution, suggesting that it does not significantly flatten or invert at millimeter wavelengths. This work demonstrates the potential for future searches of short-timescale astrophysical phenomena with the next-generation CMB experiments like the Simons Observatory.

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Yilun Guan, Sigurd Naess, Ian Niebres, Louis Branch, Adam D. Hincks, Hongbo Cai, Allen Foster, Carlos Hervías-Caimapo, John P. Hughes, Cristóbal Sifón, Edward J. Wollack. 2025-09-15. Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Constraints on the Millimetre Flux of the Crab Pulsar. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11960

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