Related papers: Millisecond Pulsars as Tools of Fundamental Physic…
Pulsars are precision celestial clocks. When being put in a binary, the ticking conveys the secret of underlying spacetime geometrodynamics. We use pulsars to test if the gravitational interaction possesses a tiny deviation from Einstein's…
Millisecond pulsars are intrinsically very stable clocks and precise measurement of their observed pulse periods can be used to study a wide variety of astrophysical phenomena. In particular, observations of a large sample of millisecond…
In this paper we review the recent discovery of several millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in eccentric binary systems. Timing these MSPs we were able to estimate (and in one case precisely measure) their masses. These results suggest that, as a…
General relativity offers a classical description to gravitation and spacetime, and is a cornerstone for modern physics. It has passed a number of empirical tests with flying colours, mostly in the weak-gravity regimes, but nowadays also in…
Searches for millisecond pulsars (which we here loosely define as those with periods $<$ 20 ms) in the Galactic field have undergone a renaissance in the past five years. New or recently refurbished radio telescopes utilizing cooled…
Pulsars are wonderful gravitational probes. Their tiny size and stellar mass give their rotation periods a stablility comparable to that of atomic frequency standards. This is especially true of the rapidly rotating "millisecond pulsars"…
The detection, in 1998, of the first Accreting Millisecond Pulsar, started an exciting season of continuing discoveries in the fashinating field of compact binary systems harbouring a neutron star. Indeed, in these last three lustres,…
The discovery of pulsars in 1968 heralded an era where the temporal characteristics of detectors had to be reassessed. Up to this point detector integration times would normally be measured in minutes rather seconds and definitely not on…
The sheer number of pulsars discovered by the SKA, in combination with the exceptional timing precision it can provide, will revolutionize the field of pulsar astrophysics. The SKA will provide a complete census of pulsars in both the…
Pulsars are natural cosmic clocks. On long timescales they rival the precision of terrestrial atomic clocks. Using a technique called pulsar timing, the exact measurement of pulse arrival times allows a number of applications, ranging from…
The precise origins of the millisecond radio pulsars, discovered in the early 1980s, remain uncertain until this day. They plausibly evolve from accreting low magnetic-field neutron stars in X-ray binary systems. If so, these stars should…
Millisecond and binary pulsars are the most stable astronomical standards of frequency. They can be applied to solving a number of problems in astronomy and time-keeping metrology including the search for a stochastic gravitational wave…
There are many reasons why it is important to increase the number of known pulsars. Not only do pulsar searches continue to improve statistical estimates of, for example, pulsar birthrates, lifetimes and the Galactic distribution, but they…
About two years ago, Wolszczan and Frail announced the detection of a possible planetary system consisting of two Earth-mass planets around a millisecond pulsar. It was pointed out shortly thereafter that the mutual gravitational…
Binary pulsars are a powerful tool for probing strong gravity that still outperforms direct gravitational wave observations in a number of directions due to the remarkable accuracy of the pulsar timing. They can constrain very precisely the…
PSR J0737-3039A is a millisecond pulsar with a spin period of 22.7 ms included in a double-neutron star system with an orbital period of 2.4 hrs. Its companion has also been detected as a radio pulsar, making this binary the first known…
This talk is based on my work in collaboration with Thibault Damour since 1991. Unified theories, like superstrings, predict the existence of scalar partners to the graviton. Such theories of gravity can be very close to general relativity…
Pulsars are rotating neutron stars which emit lighthouse-like beams. Owing to their unique properties, pulsars are a unique astrophysical tool to test general relativity, inform on matter at extreme densities, and probe galactic magnetic…
The number of known millisecond pulsars has dramatically increased in the last few years. Regular observations of these pulsars may allow gravitational waves with frequencies ~10^-9 Hz to be detected. A ``pulsar timing array'' is therefore…
Pulsars are amongst the most stable rotators known in the Universe. Over many years some millisecond pulsars rival the stability of atomic clocks. Comparing observations of many such stable pulsars may allow the first direct detection of…