Abstract
A millisecond pulsar that is formed by spin-up 'recycling'1,2 in a binary system will, once the mass transfer becomes temporarily interrupted, start to evaporate its companion star as a consequence of the large impinging pulsar energy flux. This evaporation is easiest if the pulsar has a short pulse period, the companion star has a relatively large radius and is therefore hydrogen-rich, and the orbital period is short. Evaporation of companion stars induced by millisecond pulsars could account for the lack of low-mass X-ray binaries with short orbital periods below the period gap of the cataclysmic variables, and for the statistics of new-born radio pulsars and their space velocities.
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van den Heuvel, E., van Paradijs, J. Fate of the companion stars of ultra-rapid pulsars. Nature 334, 227–228 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/334227a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/334227a0
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