On Spiders and Binary Pulsars
René Breton
University of Manchester
In recent years, the fastest growing class of binary pulsars has been that
containing an energetic millisecond pulsar strongly irradiating a low-mass
companion in a compact orbit. Dubbed "spiders" because of the cannibalistic
behaviour of the host pulsar, they in fact subdivide into two sub-classes:
"black widows" and "redbacks", which appear to differ only by the mass
of the companion. Among other things these binaries prove to be good for
measuring pulsar masses. The few measurements obtained so far indicate
that they likely constitute a rather massive sub-population of neutron
stars. Recently, members of the redback subclass have also been witnessed
to experience state transitions between pulsar and low-mass X-ray binary
states. In this talk, I will discuss some recent mass measurements as
well as notable behaviours, such as "spotty" companion surfaces, secular
flux changes and state transitions.
Date: | Thursday, 30 July 2015 |
Time: | 11:00 |
Where: | McGill University |
| McGill Space Institute (3550 University), Conference Room |
Contact: | Robert Rutledge |
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