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On the connection between accreting X-ray and radio millisecond pulsars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2013

T. M. Tauris
T. M. Tauris*
Affiliation:
Argelander-Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Germany Max-Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany
*
*email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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For many years it has been recognized that the terminal stages of mass transfer in a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) should cause the magnetosphere of the accreting neutron star to expand, leading to a braking torque acting on the spinning pulsar. After the discovery of radio millisecond pulsars (MSPs) it was therefore somewhat a paradox (e.g. Ruderman et al. 1989) how these pulsars could retain their fast spins following the Roche-lobe decoupling phase, RLDP. Here I present a solution to this so-called “turn-off problem” which was recently found by combining binary stellar evolution models with torque computations (Tauris 2012). The solution is that during the RLDP the spin equilibrium of the pulsar is broken and therefore it remains a fast spinning object. I briefly discuss these findings in view of the two observed spin distributions in the populations of accreting X-ray millisecond pulsars (AXMSPs) and radio MSPs.

Keywords

stars: neutronpulsars: generalX-rays: binariesstars: rotation
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 8 , Symposium S290: Feeding Compact Objects: Accretion on All Scales , August 2012 , pp. 141 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2013

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