[astroseminar at Sapienza] 17/11/17 at 16:00: Filippo Ambrosino - Alessandro Papitto

[Elia Battistelli]

Title: First detection of optical pulsations from the transitional 
millisecond pulsar PSR J1023+0038 with SiFAP at TNG.
Speaker:  Filippo Ambrosino (INAF - IAPS, SAPIENZA Università di Roma), 
Alessandro Papitto (INAF - OAR)
Date: Friday, 17 November 2017
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Aula Conversi, Marconi Building, Dept. of Physics, Sapienza 
University

Abstract:
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.

web: https://agenda.infn.it/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=14404