Related papers: New Black Widows and Redbacks in the Galactic Fiel…
Black widows are millisecond pulsars with low-mass companions, a few per cent the mass of the sun, on orbits of several hours. These companions are presumably the remnants of main sequence stars that lost their mass through a combination of…
A large number of new "black widow" and "redback" energetic millisecond pulsars with irradiated stellar companions have been discovered through radio and optical searches of unidentified \textit{Fermi} sources. Synchrotron emission, from…
PSR J2129-0429 is a "redback" eclipsing millisecond pulsar binary with an unusually long 15.2 hour orbit. It was discovered by the Green Bank Telescope in a targeted search of unidentified Fermi gamma-ray sources. The pulsar companion is…
We consider the evolution of millisecond radio pulsars in binary systems with a main-sequence or evolved stellar companion. Evolution of non-accreting binary systems with "eclipsing" milisecond pulsars was described by Klu\'zniak, Czerny &…
The mysterious Galactic Center Excess of gamma rays could be explained by a large population of millisecond pulsars hiding in the Galactic bulge, too faint to be detected as individual high-energy point sources by the Fermi Large Area…
We have searched for radio pulsations towards 49 Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) 1FGL Catalog $\gamma$-ray sources using the Green Bank Telescope at 350 MHz. We detected 18 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in blind searches of the data; 10 of…
Using the 1.3m and 2.4m telescopes of the MDM Observatory, we identified the close companions of two eclipsing millisecond radio pulsars discovered by the Green Bank Telescope in searches of Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope sources, and…
In the past five years, approximately one third of the 65 pulsars discovered by radio observations of Fermi unassociated sources are black widow pulsars (BWPs). BWPs are binary millisecond pulsars with companion masses ranging from 0.01-0.1…
Most millisecond pulsars with low-mass companions are in systems with either helium-core white dwarfs or non-degenerate ("black widow" or "redback") stars. A candidate counterpart to PSR J1816+4510 was identified by Kaplan et al. (2012)…
We have found an optical/X-ray counterpart candidate for the bright, but presently unidentified, Fermi source 2FGL J1311.7-3429. This counterpart undergoes large amplitude quasi-sinusoidal optical modulation with a 1.56h (5626s) period. The…
Over a dozen millisecond pulsars are ablating low-mass companions in close binary systems. In the original "black widow", the 8-hour orbital period eclipsing pulsar PSR J1959+2048 (PSR B1957+20), high energy emission originating from the…
The existence of millisecond pulsars with planet-mass companions (Bailes et al., 2011) in close orbits is challenging from the stellar evolution point of view. We calculate in detail the evolution of binary systems self-consistently,…
Black widows (BWs) are millisecond pulsars ablating their companion stars. The out-flowing material from the companion can block the radio emission of the pulsar, resulting in eclipses. In this paper, we construct a model for the radio…
We report the radio observations of the eclipsing black widow pulsar J1720-0534, a 3.26 ms pulsar in orbit with a low mass companion of mass 0.029 to 0.034 M$_{\odot}$. We obtain the phase-connected timing ephemeris and polarization profile…
This chapter provides a phenomenological appraisal of the high-energy emission of millisecond pulsars. We comment on some of their properties as a population, as well as consider the especial cases of transitional pulsars, other redbacks,…
The optical study of the heated substellar companions of `Black Widow' (BW) millisecond pulsars (MSP) provides unique information on the MSP particle and radiation output and on the neutron star mass. Here we present analysis of optical…
The Fermi catalogue contains about 2000 unassociated $\gamma$-ray sources. Some of them were recently identified as pulsars, including so called redbacks and black widows, which are millisecond pulsars in tight binary systems with non- and…
We present the first measurement of a non-zero magnetic field in the eclipsing material of a black widow pulsar. Black widows are millisecond pulsars which are ablating their companions; therefore they are often proposed as one potential…
We describe the first X-ray observations of five short orbital period ($P_B < 1$ day), $\gamma$-ray emitting, binary millisecond pulsars. Four of these, PSRs J0023+0923, J1124$-$3653, J1810+1744, and J2256$-$1024 are `black-widow' pulsars,…
Observations by the Fermi Large Area Telescope of gamma-ray millisecond pulsar light curves imply copious pair production in their magnetospheres, and not exclusively in those of younger pulsars. Such pair cascades may be a primary source…