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Black widows are extreme millisecond pulsar binaries where the pulsar wind ablates their low-mass companion stars. Their optical light curves vary periodically due to the high irradiation and tidal distortion of the companion, which allows…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-03-22 D. Mata Sánchez , M. R. Kennedy , C. J. Clark , R. P. Breton , V. S. Dhillon , G. Voisin , F. Camilo , S. Littlefair , T. R. Marsh , J. Stringer

The discovery of transitional millisecond pulsars (tMSPs) provided conclusive proof that neutron star (NS) low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) comprise part of the evolutionary pathway towards binary millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Redback and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-02-15 Amy H. Knight , Adam Ingram , Jakob van den Eijnden , Douglas J. K. Buisson , Lauren Rhodes , Matthew Middleton

We report on the timing observations of the millisecond pulsar PSR J2055+3829 originally discovered as part of the SPAN512 survey conducted with the Nan\c{c}ay Radio Telescope. The pulsar has a rotational period of 2.089 ms, and is in a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-09-11 L. Guillemot , F. Octau , I. Cognard , G. Desvignes , P. C. C. Freire , D. A. Smith , G. Theureau , T. H. Burnett

We report the discovery of PSR J1555-2908, a 1.79 ms radio and gamma-ray pulsar in a 5.6 hr binary system with a minimum companion mass of 0.052 $M_\odot$. This fast and energetic ($\dot E = 3 \times 10^{35}$ erg/s) millisecond pulsar was…

The eclipses of certain types of binary millisecond pulsars (i.e. `black widows' and `redbacks') are often studied using high-time-resolution, `beamformed' radio observations. However, they may also be detected in images generated from…

Radio emission from pulsars can be used to map out their distances through dispersion measure (DM), which quantifies the amount of radio pulse dispersion. However, this method relies on accurately modelling the free electron density in the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-03-11 Karri I. I. Koljonen , Sindre S. Lindseth , Manuel Linares , Alice K. Harding , Marco Turchetta

Redback millisecond pulsars (hereafter redbacks) are a sub-population of eclipsing millisecond pulsars in close binaries. The formation processes of these systems are not clear. The three pulsars showing transitions between rotation- and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-10-26 Kun Jia , Xiang-Dong Li

I obtained time-series photometry of the compact binary candidate for the Fermi source 4FGL J0935.3+0901. Superposed on the 2.44 hr orbital modulation are day-to-day variations and frequent flaring as seen in several redback and black widow…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-07-19 J. P. Halpern

Redback pulsars are a subclass of millisecond pulsar system with a low-mass non-degenerate companion star being ablated by the pulsar. They are of interest due to the insights they can provide for late-stage pulsar evolution during the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-19 O. A. Johnson , E. F. Keane , D. J. McKenna , H. Qiu , S. J. Swihart , J. Strader , M. McLaughlin

We describe the first X-ray observations of binary millisecond pulsars PSRs J0023+0923, J1810+1744, J2215+5135, and J2256-1024. All four are Fermi gamma-ray sources and three are 'black-widow' pulsars, with companions of mass < 0.1 solar…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-11 Peter Gentile , Maura McLaughlin , Mallory Roberts , Fernando Camilo , Jason Hessels , Matthew Kerr , Scott Ransom , Paul Ray , Ingrid Stairs

Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) represent nearly half of the more than 160 currently known $\gamma$-ray pulsars detected by the Large Area Telescope on the \textit{Fermi} satellite, and a third of all known MSPs are seen in $\gamma$ rays. The…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-03-02 L. Guillemot , D. A. Smith , H. Laffon , G. H. Janssen , I. Cognard , G. Theureau , G. Desvignes , E. C. Ferrara , P. S. Ray

Radio timing observations of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in support of Fermi LAT observations of the gamma-ray sky enhance the sensitivity of high-energy pulsation searches. With contemporaneous ephemerides we have detected gamma-ray…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-08-15 Lucas Guillemot , Ismaël Cognard , Tyrel J. Johnson , Christo Venter , Alice K. Harding

Several redback and black widow millisecond pulsar binaries have episodes of flaring in X-rays and optical. We initially detected such behavior from the Fermi selected redback candidate 1FGL J0523.5$-$2529 during optical time-series…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-08-31 Jules P. Halpern , Karen I. Perez , Slavko Bogdanov

Black widows and redbacks are binary millisecond pulsars with close low-mass companions that are irradiated and gradually ablated by the pulsar's high-energy luminosity $L_{\rm irr}$. These binaries evolve primarily through magnetic…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-08-25 Jordan Conrad-Burton , Alon Shabi , Sivan Ginzburg

We report on a comprehensive multi-wavelength study of the pulsars in the globular cluster (GC) M5, including the discovery of M5G, a new compact non-eclipsing "black widow" pulsar. Thanks to the analysis of 34 years of radio data taken…

We have discovered a new candidate redback millisecond pulsar binary near the center of the error ellipse of the bright unassociated Fermi-LAT $\gamma$-ray source 4FGL J0940.3-7610. The candidate counterpart is a variable optical source…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-03-24 Samuel J. Swihart , Jay Strader , Elias Aydi , Laura Chomiuk , Kristen C. Dage , Laura Shishkovsky

Using the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope operating at 1.36 GHz, we have performed a targeted radio pulsar survey of 289 unassociated gamma-ray sources discovered by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi satellite and published…

Blackwidow and redback systems are millisecond pulsars in compact orbits with ultra-light and low-mass companions, respectively, collectively known as ``spider pulsars". In such systems, an intrabinary shock can form between the pulsar and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-10-30 Vittoria Vecchiotti , Manuel Linares

We report our discovery of orbitally modulated $\gamma$-ray emission from the black widow system PSR J1311-3430. We analyze the \textit{Fermi} Large Area Telescope data during the offpulse phase interval of the pulsar, and find the orbital…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-05-20 Yi Xing , Zhongxiang Wang

We report on an {unusually} bright observation of PSR J1720$-$0533 using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The pulsar is in a black widow system that {was discovered by the Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-11-24 S. Q. Wang , J. B. Wang , N. Wang , J. M. Yao , G. Hobbs , S. Dai , F. F. Kou , C. C. Miao , D. Li , Y. Feng , S. J. Dang , D. H. Wang , P. Wang , J. P. Yuan , C. M. Zhang , L. Zhang , S. B. Zhang , W. W. Zhu