recycled pulsar

recycled pulsar A pulsar of unusually low magnetic field (1–100 tesla) and low spin-down rate, frequently of very short pulse period, and often found in a binary system. Recycled pulsars are believed to be ordinary pulsars which have lost energy and faded out, and then been spun up again by accretion of gas from a companion star in a binary system. A high proportion of recycled pulsars are found in the cores of globular clusters, where the high density of stars makes the capture of an old neutron star into a binary system more likely. The first recycled pulsars to be discovered had very short pulse periods and are known as millisecond pulsars, but later examples had much longer periods.