Related papers: Millisecond Oscillations in X-Ray Binaries
RXTE has been operating for nearly 2 years and is planning the third. The spacecraft performance has been good and the three instruments are operating well. Observations have been made of the range of targets suitable for RXTE, including…
A common question about compact objects in high energy astrophysics is whether it is possible to distinguish black hole from neutron star systems with some other property that is not the mass of the compact object. Up to now a few…
Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are generally agreed to originate in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), in which mass transfer onto the neutron stars spins them up to their observed, fast rotation. The lack of MSPs and LMXBs rotating near break-up…
Gravitational-wave detections are enabling measurements of the rate of coalescences of binaries composed of two compact objects -- neutron stars and/or black holes. The coalescence rate of binaries containing neutron stars is further…
Kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) may represent the orbital frequencies of the innermost Keplerian orbits around accreting neutron stars. Attempts have recently been made to derive constraints…
It is commonly believed that millisecond radio pulsars have been spun up by transfer of matter and angular momentum from a low-mass companion during an X-ray active mass transfer phase. A subclass of low-mass X-ray binaries is that of the…
Millihertz quasi-periodic oscillations reported in three neutron-star low mass X-ray binaries have been suggested to be a mode of marginally stable nuclear burning on the neutron star surface. In this Letter, we show that close to the…
Fast time variability is the most prominent characteristic of accreting systems and the presence of quasi periodic oscillations (QPOs) is a constant in all accreting systems, from cataclysmic variables to AGNs, passing through black hole…
Neutron stars are the densest objects known in the Universe. Being the final product of stellar evolution, their internal composition and structure is rather poorly constrained by measurements. It is the purpose of this paper to put some…
The remarkable discovery of kilohertz quasi-periodic brightness oscillations (QPOs) in the accretion-powered emission from some sixteen neutron-star low-mass X-ray binary systems has led to much speculation about and theoretical modeling of…
Variability studies represent a powerful tool to assess the emission mechanism(s) at work in the quiescent state of transient low mass X-ray binaries. Here we report on Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of two well known transient…
Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are short-period pulsars that are distinguished from "normal" pulsars, not only by their short period, but also by their very small spin-down rates and high probability of being in a binary system. These…
Millisecond pulsars, old neutron stars spun-up by accreting matter from a companion star, can reach high rotation rates of hundreds of revolutions per second. Until now, all such "recycled" rotation-powered pulsars have been detected by…
By virtue of their sub-hour orbital periods, ultra-compact X-ray binaries are promising sources for the space-borne gravitational-wave interferometers LISA, Taiji, and TianQin. Some of these systems contain a neutron star primary, whose…
Recent discovery of kilohertz quasi-periodic brightness oscillations of low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) has attracted attention to highly relativistic periodic motion near accreting neutron stars. Most models proposed so far involve…
Observations of short-duration gamma-ray bursts and their afterglows show that a good fraction (perhaps $\gtrsim50\%$) of binary neutron star mergers lead to strongly magnetized, rapidly rotating pulsars (including millisecond magnetars),…
Two classes of X-ray/$\gamma$-ray sources, the Soft Gamma Repeaters and the Anomalous X-ray Pulsars have been identified with isolated, slowly spinning magnetars, neutron stars whose emission draws energy from their extremely strong…
X-ray burst oscillations are quasi-coherent periodic signals at frequencies close to the neutron star spin frequency. They are observed during thermonuclear Type I X-ray bursts from a number of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) hosting a…
Binary stars have long been considered to play a crucial role in globular cluster evolution, and offer the advantages of studying systems at the same, well-determined distances. However, early search attempts were consistently thwarted by…
Neutron stars in close binary systems have the potential to spin up to millisecond periods due to the accretion of matter and angular momentum from their low-mass companions. In later stages of this process, they sometimes start to swing…