The Milky Way - Pulsars and Isolated Neutron Stars

Abstract

CONTENTS The Milky Way -- Pulsars and Isolated Neutron Stars / Introduction: Historical Overview / Physics and Astrophysics of Isolated Neutron Stars / Rotation-powered Pulsars: The Magnetic Braking Model / High-energy Emission Models / Magnetospheric Emission Models / Thermal Evolution of Neutron Stars / Photospheric Emission from Cooling Neutron Stars / The Current Picture of High-Energy Emission Properties of Isolated Neutron Stars / Young Neutron Stars in Supernova Remnants / Crab-like Pulsars / Vela-like pulsars / Radio-silent Neutron Stars in Supernova Remnants / Anomalous X-ray Pulsars and Soft Gamma-Ray Repeaters / Thermal Emission from Middle-Aged Pulsars / Old Nearby Radio Pulsars / Isolated Radio-quiet Neutron Stars / Recycled Millisecond Pulsars / Impressive Achievements and Great Expectations / References

45 pages, 19 figures, Review on high energy observations of isolated Neutron Stars. To appear in "The Century of Space Science", eds. J.Bleeker, J.Geiss, M.Huber, Kluwer Academic Publishers, in press.; Original from January 2001, revised refereed version from December 2001. The paper with high resolution images can be obtained from ftp://ftp.xray.mpe.mpg.de/people/web/Becker_Pavlov.pdf