Swings between rotation and accretion power in a binary millisecond pulsar

Accretion-powered Millisecond Pulsar Outbursts

The population of accretion-powered millisecond pulsars (AMSPs) has grown rapidly over the last four years, with the discovery of six new examples to bring the total sample to seven. While the first six discovered are transients active for a few weeks every two or more years, the most recently-discovered source HETE J1900.1−2455, has been active for more than 8 months. We summarise the transien...

What Makes an Accretion-Powered Millisecond Pulsar?

We investigate the dependence of pulse amplitudes of accreting millisecond pulsars on the masses of the neutron stars. Because the pulsation amplitudes are suppressed as the neutron stars become more massive, the probability of detection of pulsations decreases in systems that have been accreting for a long time. However, the probability of detectable pulsations is higher in transient systems w...

Multi-wavelength Emissions from the Millisecond Pulsar Binary Psr J1023+0038 during an Accretion Active State

Recent observations strongly suggest that the millisecond pulsar binary PSR J1023+0038 has developed an accretion disk since 2013 June. We present a multi-wavelength analysis of PSR J1023+0038, which reveals that 1) its gamma-rays suddenly brightened within a few days in June/July 2013 and has remained at a high gamma-ray state for several months; 2) both UV and X-ray fluxes have increased by r...

A Binary Millisecond Pulsar in Globular Cluster Ngc6544

We report the detection of a new 3.06ms binary pulsar in the globular cluster NGC6544 using a Fourier-domain “acceleration” search. With an implied companion mass of ∼ 0.01M⊙ and an orbital period of only Pb ∼ 1.7 hours, it displays very similar orbital properties to many pulsars which are eclipsed by their companion winds. The orbital period is the second shortest of known binary pulsars after...

Discovery of the First Accretion-powered Millisecond X-ray Pulsar