Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

Irradiation, bloating, bad circulation, hot flashes, cyclic mass loss. Pulsar radiation has been observed to do many suprising things to nearby companion stars ("black widows" and "redbacks"), posing several long-standing theoretical puzzles for which I will offer some solutions, along with an explanation of the behaviour of transitional millisecond pulsars and low-mass X-ray binaries.