Paper detail

The birth of radio millisecond pulsars and their high-energy signature

Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are thought to born in low-mass X-ray binaries when the neutron star has gained enough angular momentum from the accreting materials of its companion star. It is generally believed that a radio MSP is born when the neutron star stops accreting and enters a rotation-powered state. Exactly what happens during the transition time was poorly understood until a year ago. In the past year, observations have revealed a few objects that not only switched from one state to the other (as predicted in the above picture), but also have swung between the two states within weeks to years. In this work, we present observations of two of these transition objects (PSR J1023+0038 and XSS J12270-4859) and a theoretical framework that tries to explain their high-energy radiation.