A decade of transitional millisecond pulsars
Abstract
Transitional millisecond pulsars (tMSPs), which are systems that harbor a pulsar in the throes of the recycling process, have emerged as a new source class since the discovery of the first such system a decade ago. These systems switch between accretion-powered low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) and rotation-powered radio millisecond pulsar (RMSP) states, and provide exciting avenues to understand the physical processes that spin-up neutron stars to millisecond periods. During the last decade, three tMSPs, as well as a candidate source, have been extensively probed using systematic, multi-wavelength campaigns. Here we review the observational highlights from these campaigns and our general understanding of tMSPs.
- Publication:
-
Pulsar Astrophysics the Next Fifty Years
- Pub Date:
- August 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1017/S1743921317010407
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1711.10565
- Bibcode:
- 2018IAUS..337...47J
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceedings of IAU Symposium 337: Pulsar Astrophysics - The Next 50 Years