Radio Pulsars: The Neutron Star Population & Fundamental Physics

Abstract

Radio pulsars are unique laboratories for a wide range of physics and astrophysics. Understanding how they are created, how they evolve and where we find them in the Galaxy, with or without binary companions, is highly constraining of theories of stellar and binary evolution. Pulsars' relationship with a recently discovered variety of apparently different classes of neutron stars is an interesting modern astrophysical puzzle which we consider in Part I of this review. Radio pulsars are also famous for allowing us to probe the laws of nature at a fundamental level. They act as precise cosmic clocks and, when in a binary system with a companion star, provide indispensable venues for precision tests of gravity. The different applications of radio pulsars for fundamental physics will be discussed in Part II. We finish by making mention of the newly discovered class of astrophysical objects, the Fast Radio Bursts, which may or may not be related to radio pulsars or neutron stars, but which were discovered in observations of the latter.