The INTEGRAL view of the pulsating hard X-ray sky: from accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars to rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars
Tiengo, A.; Götz, D.; Mereghetti, S.; Sanna, A.; de Martino, D.; Rea, N.; Torres, D. F.; Esposito, P.; Ferrigno, C.; Papitto, A.; Di Salvo, T.; Bozzo, E.; Iaria, R.; Riggio, A.; Laurent, P.; Savchenko, V.; Kuiper, L.; Hermsen, W.; Mineo, T.; Coti Zelati, F.; Li, J.; Poutanen, J.; Paizis, A.; Falanga, M.; Moran, P.; Shearer, A.; Li, Z.; Słowikowska, A.; Ambrosino, F.; Neronov, A.; Forot, M.; Gouiffes, C.; De Falco, V.
Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Finland, Russia, Spain, Czech Republic, France, Germany, China, Ireland, Poland
Abstract
In the last 25 years a new generation of X-ray satellites imparted a significant leap forward in our knowledge of X-ray pulsars. The discovery of accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars proved that disk accretion can spin up a neutron star to a very high rotation speed. The detection of MeV-GeV pulsed emission from a few hundreds of rotation-powered pulsars probed particle acceleration in the outer magnetosphere, or even beyond. Also, a population of two dozens of magnetars has emerged. INTEGRAL played a central role to achieve these results by providing instruments with high temporal resolution up to the hard X-ray/soft, γ-ray band and a large field of view imager with good angular resolution to spot hard X-ray transients. In this article we review the main contributions by INTEGRAL to our understanding of the pulsating hard X-ray sky, such as the discovery and characterization of several accreting and transitional millisecond pulsars, the generation of the first catalog of hard X-ray/soft γ-ray rotation-powered pulsars, the detection of polarization in the hard X-ray emission from the Crab pulsar, and the discovery of persistent hard X-ray emission from several magnetars.