2.6 Going Further

This section has served as an introduction to the basic aspects of pulsar astronomy relevant to subsequent sections of this review. For those wishing to delve deeper, two excellent graduate-level monographs are available: Pulsars by Manchester & Taylor [113] and Pulsar Astronomy by Lyne & Smith [109]. Those wishing to approach the subject from a more theoretical viewpoint are advised to read Michel's The Theory of Neutron Star Magnetospheres [115] and The Physics of the Pulsar Magnetosphere by Beskin, Gurevich & Istomin [31]. Our summary of evolutionary scenarios is meant primarily as an introduction to the vast body of literature on this subject; the interested reader is referred to the excellent review by Bhattacharya & van den Heuvel [32] for further insights, as well as to recent observationally-based reviews concerning pulsar velocities [22, 94]. A useful up-to-date list of binary and millisecond pulsar parameters is available in a recent review by Camilo [39].

The list of pulsar-related resources available on the Internet is continually becoming more extensive and useful. Some of the more relevant links known to me are contained throughout this review. Good starting points for pulsar-surfers are the pages maintained by research groups at Bonn [5], Jodrell Bank [6] and Princeton [4].

Binary and Millisecond Pulsars D. R. Lorimer (dunc@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de) http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-1998-10 © Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351 Problems/Comments to livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de