Testing the accretion-induced field-decay and spin-up model for recycled pulsars
1 Institute of Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University, 30013 Hsinchu, Taiwan
e-mail: jwang@mx.nthu.edu.tw
2 National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100012 Beijing, PR China
3 Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, 30013 Hsinchu, Taiwan
Received: 16 January 2011
Accepted: 6 February 2012
Millisecond radio pulsars have long been proposed to form from a spin-up recycling process in a binary system. In this paper, we demonstrate that the accretion-induced field-decay and spin-up model for recycled pulsars can indeed produce these millisecond pulsars with relatively weak magnetic fields of 108−109 G and short spin periods of a few milliseconds. Our results also suggest that the value of the currently observed highest spin frequency of millisecond pulsars may simply depend on the amount of mass available for accretion.
Key words: binaries: general / X-rays: binaries
© ESO, 2012