Spin-Down of Radio Millisecond Pulsars at Genesis

Abstract

Millisecond pulsars are old neutron stars that have been spun up to high rotational frequencies via accretion of mass from a binary companion star. An important issue for understanding the physics of the early spin evolution of millisecond pulsars is the impact of the expanding magnetosphere during the terminal stages of the mass-transfer process. Here I report binary stellar evolution calculations that show that the braking torque acting on a neutron star, when the companion star decouples from its Roche-lobe, is able to dissipate >50% of the rotational energy of the pulsar. This effect may explain the apparent difference in observed spin distributions between x-ray and radio millisecond pulsars and help account for the noticeable age discrepancy with their young white dwarf companions.

Published in Science, 3 February, 2012 (30 pages, 4 figures, reference numbers corrected in SOM, Fig.2 rotated)

References in corpus (6)

• A Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Link
• Evidence for 1122 Hz X-Ray Burst Oscillations from the Neutron-Star X-Ray Transient XTE J1739-285
• The Spin Distribution of Millisecond X-ray Pulsars
• Cosmic recycling of millisecond pulsars
• Optical studies of companions to millisecond pulsars
• Spin Rates and Magnetic Fields of Millisecond Pulsars

Cited by in corpus (6)

• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• Formation of millisecond pulsars with CO white dwarf companions - II. Accretion, spin-up, true ages and comparison to MSPs with He white dwarf companions
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey XII : Galactic plane acceleration search and the discovery of 60 pulsars
• Binary Pulsars in Magnetic Field versus Spin Period Diagram
• Minimum Accretion Rate for Millisecond Pulsar Formation in Binary System
• Seven Pulsars in Binary Systems above the Spin-up Line