Related papers: More than meets the eye: magnetars in disguise
Millisecond pulsars represent an evolutionarily distinct group among rotation-powered pulsars. Outside the radio band, the soft X-ray range ($\sim 0.1$--10 keV) is most suitable for studying radiative mechanisms operating in these…
The detection of radio emission from an exoplanet would constitute the best way to determine its magnetic field. Indeed, the presence of a planetary magnetic field is a necessary condition for radio emission via the Cyclotron Maser…
Magnetars are young and highly magnetized neutron stars which display a wide array of X-ray activity including short bursts, large outbursts, giant flares and quasi-periodic oscillations, often coupled with interesting timing behavior…
Magnetars are believed to host the strongest magnetic fields in the present universe ($B\gtrsim10^{14}$ G) and the study of their persistent emission in the X-ray band offers an unprecendented opportunity to gain insight into physical…
Highly magnetized neutron stars (NSs) are characterized by a bewildering range of astrophysical manifestations. Here, building on our simulations of the evolution of magnetic stresses in the NS crust and its ensuing fractures (Perna & Pons…
We examine the timing history of several anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs), and find that they exhibit spin down irregularities statistically similar to those of radio pulsars. We propose that these irregularities are simply glitches like…
The location of radio pulsars in the period-period derivative (P-Pdot) plane has been a key diagnostic tool since the early days of pulsar astronomy. Of particular importance is how pulsars evolve through the P-Pdot diagram with time. Here…
There is growing evidence that soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) and anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) are isolated neutron stars with superstrong magnetic fields, i.e., magnetars, marking them a distinguished species from the conventional…
The growth of a longitudinal or quasi-longitudinal Langmuir mode in the outward-moving beam of ions and protons that forms the open sector of an ion-proton pulsar magnetosphere radiates as an analogue of an end-fed high-impedance horizontal…
The known population of pulsars contains objects with four and five component profiles, for which the peak-to-peak separations between the inner and outer components can be measured. These Q and M type profiles can be interpreted as a…
Recent low-frequency radio observations suggest that some nearby M dwarfs could be interacting magnetically with undetected close-in planets, powering the emission via the electron cyclotron maser (ECM) instability. Confirmation of such a…
Radio emission from pulsars is known to exhibit a diverse range of emission phenomena, among which nulling, where the emission becomes temporarily undetectable, is an intriguing one. Observations suggest nulling is prevalent in many…
The recent detection of gravitational waves associated with a binary neutron star merger revives interest in interacting pulsar magnetospheres. Current models predict that a significant amount of magnetic energy should be released prior to…
Luminosity is an intrinsic property of radio pulsars related to the properties of the magnetospheric plasma and the beam geometry, and inversely proportional to the observing frequency. In traditional models, luminosity has been considered…
Radio polarization measurements of pulsed emission from pulsars offer a valuable insight into the basic geometry of the neutron star: inclination angle between the magnetic and rotation axis and inclination of the line of sight. So far, all…
Ions, protons and possibly a small flux of electrons and positrons are accelerated outward from the polar cap of a normal or millisecond pulsar whose rotational spin is antiparallel with its magnetic moment. The Langmuir modes of this…
The return to the quiescent state of the Anomalous X-ray pulsar XTE J1810-197 following its 2003 outburst represents a unique opportunity to probe the surface emission properties of a magnetar. The quiescent emission of XTE J1810-197 is…
We explore a non-stationary outer gap scenario for gamma-ray emission process in pulsar magnetosphere. Electrons/positrons that migrate along the magnetic field line and enter the outer gap from the outer/inner boundaries activate the…
We show that the observed pulsed optical emission of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U 0142+61 can be accounted for by both the magnetar outer gap models and the disk-star dynamo gap models, therefore is not an evidence in favor of one of these…
Certain multi-wavelength observations of neutron stars, such as intermittent radio emissions from rotation-powered pulsars beyond the pair-cascade death line, the pulse profile of the magnetar SGR 1900+14 after its 1998 August 27 giant…