New Black Widows and Redbacks in the Galactic Field

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent discoveries of new black widow and redback millisecond pulsars in the Galactic field, highlighting their binary properties, distance uncertainties, and high-energy emission implications.

Contribution

It provides a summary of recent pulsar discoveries, classifies them into black widows and redbacks, and discusses their astrophysical significance.

Findings

Large increase in known eclipsing millisecond pulsars in the Galactic field.

Many are associated with Fermi gamma-ray sources.

Implications for high-energy emission are discussed.

Abstract

There has recently been a large increase in the number of known eclipsing radio millisecond pulsars in the Galactic field, many of which are associated with Fermi gamma-ray sources. All are in tight binaries (P_b < 24hr) many of which are classical "black widows" with very low mass companions (M_c << 0.1 M_sol) but some are "redbacks" with probably non-degenerate low mass companions (M_c ~ 0.2 M_sol). I review the new discoveries, briefly discuss the distance uncertainties and the implications for high-energy emission.