Probing fundamental physics with pulsars

Abstract

Pulsars provide a wealth of information about General Relativity, the equation of state of superdense matter, relativistic particle acceleration in high magnetic fields, the Galaxy's interstellar medium and magnetic field, stellar and binary evolution, celestial mechanics, planetary physics and even cosmology. The wide variety of physical applications currently being investigated through studies of radio pulsars rely on: (i) finding interesting objects to study via large-scale and targeted surveys; (ii) high-precision timing measurements which exploit their remarkable clock-like stability. We review current surveys and the principles of pulsar timing and highlight progress made in the rotating radio transients, intermittent pulsars, tests of relativity, understanding pulsar evolution, measuring neutron star masses and the pulsar timing array.

6 pages, 1 figure, to appear in the proceedings of IAU XXVII GA - JD3 - Neutron Stars: Timing in Extreme Environments XXVII IAU General Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3-14 August 2009

References in corpus (8)

• Neutron Star Observations: Prognosis for Equation of State Constraints
• Tests of general relativity from timing the double pulsar
• Binary and Millisecond Pulsars
• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Upper bounds on the low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background from pulsar timing observations: current limits and future prospects
• A Massive Neutron Star in the Globular Cluster M5
• Discovery of 28 pulsars using new techniques for sorting pulsar candidates
• The GBT350 Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane for Radio Pulsars and Transients