AstroGrav pizza lunch - Juan Hernandez Santisteban Seminar

In the last few years, a new class of millisecond pulsar binaries has been observed to transition between two distinct states: a) where the pulsar dominates the emission of the system while ablating the low-mass companion and, b) where mass transfer from the companion builds an accretion disc and the system behaves as a low-mass X-ray binary. The first system detected to perform this transition was PSR J1023+0038, providing direct evidence for the spun-up of pulsars to the millisecond regime, the so-called recycling scenario. Since then, we have found 3 other candidate systems which have given us insight on this important yet widely mysterious phase. I will give a review on the latest breakthroughs given by these systems and our current understanding of this transition state.

Discussion group meeting