Benefitting from the unequaled precision of the pulsar timing technique, binary pulsars are important testbeds of gravity theories, providing some of the tightest bounds on alternative theories of gravity. One class of well-motivated alternative gravity theories, the scalar–tensor gravity, predict large deviations from general relativity for neutron stars through a nonperturbative phenomenon known as spontaneous scalarization. This effect, which cannot be tested in the Solar System, can now be tightly constrained using the latest results from the timing of a set of seven binary pulsars (PSRs J0348+0432, J1012+5307, J1738+0333, J1909−3744, J2222−0137, J0737−3039A, and J1913+1102), especially with the updated parameters of PSRs J2222−0137, J0737−3039A and J1913+1102. Using new timing results, we constrain the neutron star’s effective scalar coupling, which describes how strongly neutron stars couple to the scalar field, to a level of αA≲6×10−3 in a Bayesian analysis. Our analysis is thorough, in the sense that our results apply to all neutron star masses and all reasonable equations of state of dense matters, in the full relevant parameter space. It excludes the possibility of spontaneous scalarization of neutron stars, at least within a class of scalar–tensor gravity theories.

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关闭双脉冲星的自发标量窗口

受益于脉冲星计时技术无与伦比的精度，双脉冲星是引力理论的重要试验台，为替代引力理论提供了一些最严格的界限。一类动机良好的替代引力理论，标量-张量引力，通过一种称为自发标量化的非微扰现象预测中子星与广义相对论的巨大偏差。这种无法在太阳系中测试的效应现在可以使用一组七个双脉冲星（PSR J0348+0432、J1012+5307、J1738+0333、J1909−3744、J2222）计时的最新结果来严格限制−0137、J0737−3039A 和 J1913+1102），尤其是更新了 PSR J2222−0137、J0737−3039A 和 J1913+1102 的参数。使用新的计时结果，我们约束了中子星的有效标量耦合， αA≲6个×1个0−3个 在贝叶斯分析中。我们的分析是彻底的，因为我们的结果适用于所有中子星质量和所有合理的致密物质状态方程，在完整的相关参数空间中。它排除了中子星自发标量化的可能性，至少在一类标量-张量引力理论中是这样。