First detection of optical pulsations from the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 with SiFAP@TNG.

by Alessandro Papitto (INAF - OAR), Filippo Ambrosino (INAF - IAPS, SAPIENZA Università di Roma)

Friday 17 Nov 2017, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

The recent advent of solid state detectors originally developed for high energy physics, completely revolutioned astrophysical measurements. An ultra fast photometer based on the Silicon Photo Multiplier technology (SiFAP, Silicon Fast Astronomical Photometer), capable of the single photon detection in the Optical band (320-900 nm) with a time resolution down to 25 ns, was developed at the Department of Physics of Sapienza Università di Roma since 2009 to study astrophysical variable sources. In this talk, we will discuss the recent discovery of optical pulsations from the transitional millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 (Ambrosino, Papitto et al. 2017, Nature Astronomy), achieved using the SiFAP at the 3.6 m INAF telescope Galileo. Tranistional millisecond pulsars are able to swing over a few weeks between an X-ray pulsar regime powered by the accretion of matter onto the neutron star, and a radio pulsar state powered by magnetospheric particle acceleration. The implication of this unexpected discovery on our understanding of transitional pulsar mechanism will be discussed.