Black Widow Evolution

Black widows are millisecond pulsars with low-mass companions (~2% the mass of the sun) on short orbits of several hours. When the first black widow was discovered in 1988, it was proposed that its companion is the remnant of a main sequence star that had been evaporated by the pulsar’s high energy radiation. I will present new observations from the last decade that challenge this picture, and discuss how the growing population of black widows can be explained consistently.

The talk will be given over Zoom, at: https://zoom.us/j/9290951953

The official talk starts at 16:30 Jerusalem Time (06:30 PDT), but we'll start preparing and mingling on Zoom from 16:00 and onwards