Twenty years of Accreting Millisecond Pulsars
Abstract
In the last 20 years, since the discovery in 1998 of the first Accreting Millisecond Pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658, our understanding of the millisecond pulsar population changed dramatically. Thanks to the large effective area and good time resolution of the NASA X-ray observatory Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer first and the ESA XMM-Newton after, we discovered that neutron stars in Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs) spins at frequencies between 200 and 750 Hz, indirectly confirming the recycling scenario, according to which neutron stars are spun up to millisecond periods during the LMXB-phase.In this review I describe the properties of accreting millisecond pulsars, with particular attention to the last discoveries and to the long-term orbital and spin evolution. I will highlight what we know and what we have still to learn about in order to fully understand the (sometime puzzling) behaviour of these systems and their evolutionary connection to the rotation-powered millisecond pulsars population.
- Publication:
-
42nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- July 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018cosp...42E.833D