Search for optical pulsations in PSR J0337+1715

Abstract

We report on a search for optical pulsations from PSR J0337+1715 at its observed radio pulse period. PSR J0337+1715 is a millisecond pulsar (2.7 ms spin period) in a triple hierarchical system with two white dwarfs, and has a known optical counterpart with g-band magnitude 18. The observations were done with the ARray Camera for Optical to Near-IR Spectrophotometry at the 200 arcsec Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. No significant pulsations were found in the range 4000–11 000 Å, and we can limit pulsed emission in g band to be fainter than 25 mag.