Related papers: Do pulsars rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?
Diffractive and refractive magnetospheric scintillations may allow a direct testing of the plasma inside the light cylinder. Unusual electrodynamics of the strongly magnetized electron-positron plasma allow separation of the magnetospheric…
Is pulsar make up of strange matter? The magnetic field decay of a pulsar may be able to give us an answer. Since Cooper pairing of quarks occurs inside a sufficiently cold strange star, the strange stellar core is superconducting. In order…
We investigate the possibilities that pulsars act as the lens in gravitational microlensing events towards the galactic bulge or a spiral arm. Our estimation is based on expectant survey and observations of FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture…
Pulsars are factories of relativistic electrons and positrons that propagate away from the pulsar, permeating later our Galaxy. The acceleration and propagation of these particles are a matter of intense debate. In the last few years, we…
We have monitored a large sample of millisecond pulsars using the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope in order to compare their radio emission properties to the slowly rotating population. With some notable exceptions, our findings suggest…
According to the observational limits on the radius and mass, the fastest rotating pulsar (PSR 1937+21) is probably a strange star, or at least some neutron star equations of state should be ruled out, if we suggest that a dipole magnetic…
The recent discovery of rotating radio transients and the quasi-periodicity of pulsar activity in the radio pulsar PSR B1931$+$24 has challenged the conventional theory of radio pulsar emission. Here we suggest that these phenomena could be…
Recent results from the PAMELA satellite indicate the presence of a large flux of positrons (relative to electrons) in the cosmic ray spectrum between approximately 10 and 100 GeV. As annihilating dark matter particles in many models are…
Pulsars are often lauded for their (relative) rotational and radio emission stability over long time scales. However, long-term observing programmes are identifying an increasing number of pulsars that deviate from this preconceived notion.…
Pulsars are known to display short-term variability. Recently, examples of longer-term emission variability have emerged that are often correlated with changes in the rotational properties of the pulsar. To further illuminate this…
The thesis focuses on different aspects of radio pulsars: on the one hand it describes research on the pulsar emission mechanism (nulling, drifting subpulses, single-pulse polarisation and their mutual interaction). On the other it gives an…
The observed fraction of pulsars with interpulses, their period distribution and the observed pulse width versus pulse period correlation is shown to be inconsistent with a model in which the angle alpha between the magnetic axis and the…
Millisecond pulsars are extremely precise celestial clocks: as they rotate, the beamed radio waves emitted along the axis of their magnetic field can be detected with radio telescopes, which allows for tracking subtle changes in the…
It has been recently suggested that magnetically affected neutrino oscillations inside a cooling protoneutron star, created in a supernova explosion, could explain the large proper motion of pulsars. We investigate whether this hypothesis…
High-energy gamma rays are a valuable tool for studying particle acceleration and radiation in the magnetospheres of energetic pulsars. The seven or more pulsars seen by instruments on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) show that: the…
In their catalogue of pulsars' radio spectra, Swainston et al. (2022, PASA, 39, e056) distinguish between five different forms of these spectra: those that can be fitted with (i) a simple power law, (ii) a broken power law, (iii) a…
Rotation in massive stars has been studied on the main sequence and during helium burning for decades, but only recently have realistic numerical simulations followed the transport of angular momentum that occurs during more advanced stages…
It is generally accepted that the pulsar magnetic field converts most of its rotational energy losses into radiation. In this paper, we propose an alternative emission mechanism, in which neither the pulsar rotational energy nor its…
X-ray pulsars shine thanks to the conversion of the gravitational energy of accreted material to X-ray radiation. The accretion rate is modulated by geometrical and hydrodynamical effects in the stellar wind of the pulsar companions and/or…
Pulsars emit low-frequency radio waves through to high-energy gamma-rays that are generated anywhere from the surface out to the edges of the magnetosphere. Detecting correlated mode changes in the multi-wavelength emission is therefore key…