Related papers: Pulsars as Fantastic Objects and Probes
We discuss the outstanding issues of the interstellar medium which will depend on the application of knowledge from plasma physics. We particularly advocate attention to recent developments in experimental plasma physics, and urge that the…
It is believed that pulsars are neutron stars or strange stars with crusts. However we suggest here that pulsars may be bare strange stars (i.e., strange stars without crust). Due to rapid rotation and strong emission, young strange stars…
Neutron stars are some of the densest manifestations of massive objects in the universe. They are ideal astrophysical laboratories for testing theories of dense matter physics and provide connections among nuclear physics, particle physics…
Black holes are perhaps the most strange and fascinating objects known to exist in the universe. Our understanding of space and time is pushed to its limits by the extreme conditions found in these objects. They can be used as natural…
Gravitational waves provide a laboratory for general relativity and a window to energetic astrophysical phenomena invisible with electromagnetic radiation. Several terrestrial detectors are currently under construction, and a space-based…
The ionised media that permeate the Milky Way have been active topics of research since the discovery of pulsars in 1967. In fact, pulsars allow one to study several aspects of said plasma, such as their column density, turbulence,…
Neutron stars are versatile in their application to studying various important aspects of fundamental physics, in particular strong-field gravity tests and the equation of state for super-dense nuclear matter at low temperatures. However,…
Neutron stars are rich laboratories of multiple branches of modern physics. These include gravitational physics, nuclear and particle physics, (quantum) electrodynamics, and plasma astrophysics. In this chapter, we present the pioneering…
Pulsars are amongst the most stable rotators known in the Universe. Over many years some millisecond pulsars rival the stability of atomic clocks. Comparing observations of many such stable pulsars may allow the first direct detection of…
Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To…
The observational properties of the six known Anomalous X-ray Pulsars are described in the context of the main theoretical models for this enigmatic class of objects.
Pulsars have mean space velocities >~500 km/s. The consequent ram pressure results in tight confinement of the star's energetic wind, driving a bow shock into the surrounding medium. Pulsar bow shocks have long been regarded as a curiosity,…
The number of known millisecond pulsars has dramatically increased in the last few years. Regular observations of these pulsars may allow gravitational waves with frequencies ~10^-9 Hz to be detected. A ``pulsar timing array'' is therefore…
Massive stars are inherently extreme objects, in terms of radiation, mass loss, rotation, and sometimes also magnetic fields. Concentrating on a (personally biased) subset of processes related to pulsations, rapid rotation and its interplay…
Microquasars are compact objects (stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars) that mimic, on a smaller scale, many of the phenomena seen in quasars. Their discovery provided new insights into the physics of relativistic jets observed…
The phenomenal rotational stability of millisecond pulsars allows them to be used as precise celestial clocks. An array of these pulsars can be exploited to search for correlated perturbations in their pulse times of arrival due to…
Members of the family of pulsar-like stars are distinguished by their different manifestations observed, i.e., radio pulsars, accretion-driven X-ray pulsars, X-ray bursts, anomalous X-ray pulsars/soft gamma-ray repeaters, compact center…
Particle physics and gravitational waves provide complementary probes of the deep structure of the Universe. Gravitational waves from the mergers of neutron stars and black holes are sensitive to the structure of dense quark matter and to…
In this lecture, we give a first introduction to neutron stars, based on fundamental physical principles. After outlining their amazing macroscopic properties, as obtained from observations, we infer the extreme conditions of matter in…
Pulsars are known to be efficient accelerators that produce copious amounts of relativistic particles and inject them into the Galactic medium. The radiation emitted by such a pulsar wind can be seen from radio through gamma-rays as a…