Millisecond pulsar

This diagram shows the steps astronomers say are needed to create a pulsar with a superfast spin. 1. A massive supergiant star and a "normal" Sun-like star orbit each other. 2. The massive star explodes, leaving a pulsar that eventually slows down, turns off, and becomes a cooling neutron star. 3. The Sun-like star eventually expands, spilling material on to the neutron star. This "accretion" speeds up the neutron star's spin. 4. Accretion ends, the neutron star is "recycled" into a millisecond pulsar. But in a densely packed globular cluster (2b)... The lowest mass stars are ejected, the remaining normal stars evolve, and the "recycling" scenario (3-4) takes place, creating many millisecond pulsars.

A millisecond pulsar (MSP) is a pulsar with a rotational period less than about 10 milliseconds. Millisecond pulsars have been detected in radio, X-ray, and gamma ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The leading hypothesis for the origin of millisecond pulsars is that they are old, rapidly rotating neutron stars that have been spun up or "recycled" through accretion of matter from a companion star in a close binary system.[1][2] For this reason, millisecond pulsars are sometimes called recycled pulsars.

  1. ^ Bhattacharya, D.; Van Den Heuvel, E. P. J. (1991). "Formation and evolution of binary and millisecond radio pulsars". Physics Reports. 203 (1–2): 1. Bibcode:1991PhR...203....1B. doi:10.1016/0370-1573(91)90064-S.
  2. ^ Tauris, T. M.; Van Den Heuvel, E. P. J. (2006). Formation and evolution of compact stellar X-ray sources. Bibcode:2006csxs.book..623T.