Twinkle, Twinkle Spinning Pulsar, How I Wonder Where
You Are:
Searching for Binary and Millisecond Pulsars
Jason Hessels
Pulsars are the super-dense remains of supernova explosions.
They are as massive as the Sun, yet smaller than the island of Montreal.
Typically pulsars are detected through the pulsations they emit
from their magnetic polar caps. By measuring the period of these
pulsations, we can measure the spin rate of the star as a function of
time and infer some of the star's physical properties. This talk will
focus specifically on pulsars in binary systems as well as the
fastest-spinning pulsars, the millisecond pulsars, which spin hundreds
of times a second! I will briefly describe the formation scenario for
these objects, but I will mostly focus on the observational and numerical
techniques used to find these objects. The recent discovery of a double
pulsar system (Lyne et al. 2004, which will provide unprecedented tests
of General Relativity) underlines the need to find more of these exotic
systems.
Wednesday, October 6th 2004, 12:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Boardroom (room 104)
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