The Lives of the Neutron Stars (NATO Science Series C: Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Volume 450). This item is unavailable.The Lives of the Neutron Stars (NATO Science Series C: Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Volume 450)

This NATO AS! was the third in the series of Advanced Study Institutes on neutron stars, which started with 'Timing Neutron Stars', held in Qe§me near izmir, Turkey (April 1988), followed by 'Neutron Stars, an Interdis­ ciplinary Subject', held in Agia Pelagia on the island of Crete (September 1990). The first school centered on our main observational access to neu­ tron stars, i. e. the timing of radio pulsars and accretion powered neutron stars, and on what timing of neutron stars teaches us of their structure and environment. The second school had as its theme the interplay between diverse areas of physics which find interesting, even exotic applications in the extreme conditions of neutron stars and their magnetospheres. As the field has developed, with the number of observed neutron stars rapidly in­ creasing, and our knowledge of many individual neutron stars getting deeper and more detailed, an evolutionary picture of neutron stars has started to emerge. This led us to choose 'The Lives of the Neutron Stars' as the uni­ fying theme of this third Advanced Study Institute on neutron stars. Different types of neutron star activity have been proposed to follow one another in stages during the lives of neutron stars in the same basic population; the evolutionary connection between low-mass X-ray binaries and millisecond radio pulsars is perhaps the prime example.

As the most compact known observable form of matter, neutron stars offer a fascinating range of problems to astrophysicists. This text offers a collection of reviews of current research on neutron stars, variously observed as radio pulsars, X-ray binaries, gamma-ray sources and sources of thermal X-ray emission. The reviews are meant for an audience of graduate students and scientists in the field, so they combine a tutorial approach with the objectives of a scientific review. The central theme of the book is evolution, stressing the changes of thermal, magnetic and dynamical properties throughout the lives of neutron stars.