Abstract
In 1982 a new class of pulsars was defined by the discovery of a star with a millisecond rotation period, 1.6 ms. In the past 3.5 years two additional pulsars with millisecond periods have been discovered. The rapid spin of these pulsars is attributed to mass transfer in a low-mass binary progenitor system. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of companions in two of the three millisecond pulsars. These recent discoveries have led both to a deeper understanding of the final stages of stellar evolution in binary systems, and to closer ties between the observational study of neutron stars by radio, optical and X-ray techniques. In addition the millisecond pulsars provide precise astrophysical clocks that can be used to improve the solar-system ephemeredes and to search for a background of gravitational waves that may have been produced in the early stages of the visible universe. Old and ongoing searches for new millisecond pulsars are described in this paper.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Reference16 articles.
1. Seigelstein D.J. , et al., 1986, Nature, in press.
2. Purvis A. , et al. 1984, NRAO Workshop on ‘Millisecond Pulsars’, edited by Reynolds S. P. and Stinebring D. R. , p. 252.
3. On the Nature of Pulsars. III. Analysis of Observations
4. Wang Z. R. 198, IAU Symposium 125, this volume.
5. High-radio-frequency survey for young and millisecond pulsars