Dany Page: Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico)

Do Supernovae Make or Kill Pulsars?

I'll present results of numerical simulations of post-supernova hypercritical (i.e. highly super-Eddington) accretion onto a new-born magnetized neutron star. The purpose of these is to study whether such accretion is able to submerge the magnetic field and produce a non-magnetized star. CCOs may be candidates for such demagnetized neutron stars.

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Slavko Bogdanov: Columbia

X-rays from Radio Millisecond Pulsars

Although rotation-powered ("recycled") millisecond pulsars are routinely discovered and studied primarily at radio frequencies, the soft X-ray band (~0.1-10 keV) provides complementary information regarding the basic physics of these objects that is inaccessible via radio timing observations alone. Recent X-ray studies with Chandra and XMM-Newton have revealed that the majority of millisecond pulsars exhibit faint ~0.5-2 MK thermal radiation from their magnetic polar caps. Realistic modelling of this surface emission, including full relativistic and atmospheric effect, has the potential to yield stringent constraints on the elusive neutron star equation of state. In this talk I will summarize the current state of affairs and future prospects in the study of millisecond pulsars at X-ray energies.