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Neutron stars and pulsars

An introduction to models and observations

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Abstract.

Neutron star models require many “exotic" physical ingredients: cold ultra-dense matter, very strong gravitational and magnetic fields, high-energy radiation in X and gamma range, ... For starting, a short historical review of the notions of pulsar and neutron star are given, theoretical and numerical models for these objects are then detailed, before main observations (available and to come), together with the constraints they are putting on the models are reviewed. The pulsar emission mechanism is sketched and the last part of this introduction describes some observations using neutron stars as probes for modern physics.

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Correspondence to J. Novak.

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Novak, J. Neutron stars and pulsars. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 156, 151–168 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2008-00612-4

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