The magnetar SGR J1830–0645 was discovered in outburst in October 2020. We studied its X-ray properties during the first month of the outburst using XMM–Newton, NuSTAR and Swift observations. The shape and amplitude of the pulse profile varied significantly with energy. The broadband spectrum was well described using two absorbed blackbody components plus a faint power law component at high energies. Phase-resolved spectral analysis of the data suggests that the emission could be attributed to thermal photons from a single heated region with a complex shape on the star surface undergoing resonant Compton scattering on charged particles located in the magnetosphere. Modelling the evolutionary path of the magnetar with our magneto-thermal evolutionary codes indicates that SGR J1830 was born ≈23 kyr ago with a dipolar magnetic field of ∼1015 G, slightly larger than the current value.

The population of black widows, binary systems containing a millisecond pulsar and a very low-mass companion star exposed to the high-energy pulsar wind, has grown exponentially in the past few years. The number of black widow candidates is now over 30 systems, but only 14 have been confirmed so far. Their relevance in analysing the extremes of the neutron stars properties led to multiwavelength dedicated studies that revealed a rich phenomenology. In this work, we provide a glimpse into the black widow class through modelling of high-cadence multi-band light curves of 6 systems, accounting for almost half of the confirmed population. A better understanding of the black widow population, which hosts some of the most massive and fastest spinning neutron stars, will ultimately benefit future modelling of compact object mergers.

Neutron stars are known to host extremely powerful magnetic fields. Among other effects, one of the consequences of harboring such fields is the deformation of the neutron star structure, leading, together with rotation, to the emission of continuous gravitational waves (CGWs). We present an extensive numerical study of magnetized neutron stars in GR with a large variety of different Equations of State (EoSs) and show that it is possible to find simple relations between the magnetic deformation of a neutron star, its mass and radius, that are mostly independent on the EoS or magnetic configuration. We discuss how these relations can be used in conjunction with possible future CGWs detection to set constrains on the EoS and magnetic configurations of NSs (e.g. the presence of a superconducting phase). By carrying out a population synthesis, we estimate the possible CGWs detectability of galactic millisecond pulsars, with third generation GW detectors.

Nearby star-forming galaxies offer a unique environment to study the populations of young (<100 Myr) accreting binaries. These systems are tracers of past populations of massive stars that heavily affect their immediate environment and parent galaxies. Using a Chandra X-ray Visionary program, we investigate the young neutron-star binary population in the low metallicity of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) by reaching quiescent X-ray luminosity levels (~few times 1032 erg/s). We present the first measurement of the formation efficiency of high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) as a function of the age of their parent stellar populations by using 3 indicators: the number ratio of HMXBs to OB stars, to the SFR, and to the stellar mass produced during the specific star-formation burst they are associated with. In all cases, we find that the HMXB formation efficiency increases as a function of time up to ~40–60 Myr, and then gradually decreases.

We calculate the luminosity of the synchrotron radiation from the vicinity of the light cylinder. We find that even if the thermal emission from the entire surface is included as the seed photon, the γ-ray to X-ray flux ratio for young pulsars is significantly higher than the observations. For these pulsars, most of γ-ray photons may be absorbed in the magnetosphere.

Over the last fifty years since the discovery of pulsars, our understanding of where and how pulsars emit the radiation we observe has undergone significant revision. The location and mechanisms of high-energy radiation are intimately tied to the sites of particle acceleration. The evolution of emission models has paralleled the development of increasingly more sensitive telescopes, especially at high energies. I will review the history of pulsar emission modeling, from the early days of gaps at the polar caps, to outer gaps and slot gaps in the outer magnetosphere, to the present era of global magnetosphere simulations that locate most acceleration and high-energy emission in the current sheets.

Pulsars were discovered on the basis of their individual pulses, first by Jocelyn Bell and then by many others. This was chart-recorder science as computers were not yet in routine use. Single pulses carry direct information about the emission process as revealed in the detailed properties of their polarization characteristics. Early analyses of single pulses proved so dizzyingly complex that attention shifted to study of average profiles. This is turn led to models of pulsar emission beams—in particular the core/double-cone model—which now provides a foundation for understanding single-pulse sequences. We mention some of the 21stC single-pulse surveys and conclude with a brief discussion of our own recent analyses leading to the identification of the pulsar radio-emission mechanism of both slow and millsecond pulsars.

The upgraded GMRT (uGMRT) with its unprecedented sensitivity and high figure of merit, is expected to result in the discovery of a large population of pulsars including pulsars of previously unknown type. In the phase-2 of the GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky (GHRSS) survey with the uGMRT we will reach 1/4th of sensitivity of the SKA Phase-1. In this paper we highlight the salient features of the survey of pulsars and fast transients with the uGMRT highlighting its discovery potential. The extended GMRT (eGMRT) equipped with wide field-of-view, increased collecting area will have unprecedented sensitivity in time-domain astronomy, reaching close to SKA-Phase1. Many fold increase in the number of elements, increase in the baseline length and addition of phased array feed will make eGMRT an excellent instrument for the survey of pulsars and transients with a promise of detecting large variety of pulsars and fast radio bursts.

In this contribution, we have made use of the contemporary equation of states (EOSs) for the complete neutron star structure, and confronted them with one particular glitch constrain for the crustal moment of inertia (MOI). We find that with these EOSs, the radii of three millisecond pulsars selected by NICER: PSR J0437-4715, PSR J1614-2230, PSR J0751+1807, are all around 12.5 km. Also, a star with M ≲ 1.55M⊙ would fulfill the MOI calculation for glitch constrain with the latest neutron superfluidity density, and the glitch crisis might not be present.

International LOFAR stations, equipped with powerful backends, can be used as individual telescopes, and provide data sets complementary to those obtained with the LOFAR Core. Such “local mode” observations are particularly adapted to monitoring observations, where the advantage of having a high observing cadence (one observation per week) outweighs the reduced sensitivity of a single station when compared to the full array. With such observations, it is possible to monitor the temporal evolution of the pulsars’ behaviour via its dispersion, scattering, intensity, and profile shape. We present recent studies performed in the LOFAR low band (10-90 MHz).

Here, we present initial results from the ALFABURST radio transient survey, which is currently running in a commensal mode with the ALFA receiver at the Arecibo telescope. We observed for a total of 1400 hours and have detected single pulses from known pulsars but did not detect any FRBs. The non-detection of FRBs is consistent with the current FRB sky rates.

The Square Kilometre Array will be an amazing instrument for pulsar astronomy. While the full SKA will be sensitive enough to detect all pulsars in the Galaxy visible from Earth, already with SKA1, pulsar searches will discover enough pulsars to increase the currently known population by a factor of four, no doubt including a range of amazing unknown sources. Real time processing is needed to deal with the 60 PB of pulsar search data collected per day, using a signal processing pipeline required to perform more than 10 POps. Here we present the suggested design of the pulsar search engine for the SKA and discuss challenges and solutions to the pulsar search venture.

Since their discovery 50 years ago, neutron stars have continually astonished. From the first-discovered radio pulsars to the powerful “magnetars” that emit sudden bursts of X-rays and γ-rays, from the so-called Isolated Neutron Stars to Central Compact Objects, observational manifestations of neutron stars are surprisingly varied, with most properties totally unpredicted. The challenge is to cement an overarching physical theory of neutron stars and their birth properties that can explain this great diversity. Here I briefly survey the disparate neutron star classes, describe their properties, highlight recent results, and describe efforts at “grand unification” of this wealth of observational phenomena.

Fifty years of pulsar data has led to the discovery of emission and rotation variability on timescales of months and years; we have developed techniques to identify this long timescale variability. Individual observations may be too noisy to identify subtle changes in a pulse profile; we use Gaussian process regression to model noisy observations and produce a continuous map of pulse profile variability. Generally, multiple observing epochs are required to obtain the pulsar spin frequency derivative. Gaussian process regression is, therefore, also used to monitor this rate of spindown. We have applied variability detection techniques to both millisecond and long period pulsar datasets. I will discuss the techniques used and present the most interesting results from the pulsars analysed.

Despite the early optical detection of the Crab pulsar in 1969, optical pulsars have become the poor cousin of the neutron star family. Only five normal pulsars have been observed to pulse in the optical waveband. A further three magnetars/SGRs have been detected in the optical/near IR. Optical pulsars are intrinsically faint with a first order luminosity, predicted by Pacini, to be proportional to P−10, where P is the pulsar’s period. Consequently they require both large telescopes, generally over-subscribed, and long exposure times, generally difficult to get. However optical observations have the benefit that polarisation and spectral observations are possible compared to X-ray and gamma-ray observations where polarisation measurements are limited. Over the next decade the number of optical pulsars should increase as optical detectors approach 100% quantum efficiency and as we move into the era of extremely large telescopes where limiting fluxes will be 30 to 100 times fainter compared to existing optical telescopes.

This paper details on the discovery of 21 pulsars using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) from targeted (Fermi directed search) and blind surveys (GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky - GHRSS) and results from the follow up studies. We discovered seven millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in the Fermi directed searches, which are the first Galactic MSPs discovered with the GMRT. We have discovered 13 pulsars (including a MSP and two mildly recycled pulsars) with the GHRSS survey, which is an off-Galactic-plane survey at 322 MHz with complementary target sky (declination range −40 deg to −54 deg) to other ongoing low-frequency surveys by GBT and LOFAR. The simultaneous time-domain and imaging study for localising pulsars and transients and efficient candidate investigation with machine learning are some of the features of the GHRSS survey, which are also finding application in the SKA design methodology.

In this proceeding, we are going to introduce our recent work about the dependence of pulsar death line on the equation of state (Zhou et al. 2017). The results show that the equation of state affects the location of the pulsar death line in the P-Ṗ diagram. We offer another point of view to understand the pulsar death line and multiple observational facts would help us to reveal the nature of pulsars.

Fifty years of pulsars also mean fifty years of using them as tools to probe other phenomena and physics. One prominent example is the usage of pulsars to test theories of gravity. Probing the quasi-stationary strong-field regime, pulsars allow high precision tests that will maintain their importance even in the era of gravitation wave observations with ground-based detectors. This contribution summarise the methods and status of the field and provides a brief outlook into the future.

We propose searching for isolated stellar-mass black hole (BH) candidates based on the fact that more than 50% of radio pulsars have originated in binary systems, where the other component could have evolved into a BH prior to the second supernova event of the system, which caused its disruption. We selected isolated, relatively young radio pulsars with known parallaxes and proper motions and traced their trajectories back to their presumed birth locations. These locations were then analyzed for possible BH candidates based on the available positional, photometric, and spectral data. We present the first results for 2 pulsars, J0139+5814 and J0922+0638. Seven BH candidates were selected for further analysis.

The strongest known magnetic fields are found in neutron stars. I briefly discuss how they are inferred from observations, as well as the evidence for their time-evolution. I go on to show how these extremely strong fields are actually weak in terms of their effects on the stellar structure. This is also the case for magnetic stars on the upper main sequence and magnetic white dwarfs, which have similar total magnetic fluxes, perhaps pointing to an evolutionary connection. I suggest that a stable hydromagnetic equilibrium (containing a poloidal and a toroidal field component) could be established soon after the birth of the neutron star, aided by the strong compositional stratification of neutron star matter, and this state is slowly eroded by non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic processes such as beta decays and ambipolar diffusion in the core of the star and Hall drift and breaking of the solid in its crust. Over sufficiently long time scales, the fluid in the neutron star core will behave as if it were barotropic, because, depending on temperature and magnetic field strength, beta decays will keep adjusting the composition to the chemical equilibrium state, or ambipolar diffusion will decouple the charged component from the neutrons. Therefore, the still open question regarding stable hydromagnetic equilibria in barotropic fluids will become relevant for the evolution, at least for magnetar fields, which are likely too strong to be stabilized by the solid crust.