Phase Transition in Pulsar Timing

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A phase transition in the nature of matter in the core of a neutron star, such as quark deconfinement or Bose condensation, can cause the spontaneous spin-up of a solitary millisecond pulsar. The spin-up epoch for our model lasts for 2× 10⁷ years or 1/50 of the spin-down time (Glendenning, Pei and Weber in Ref. glen97:a). The possibility exists also for future measurements on X-ray neutron stars with low-mass companions for mapping out the tell-tale ``backbending'' behavior of the moment of inertia. Properties of phase transitions in substances such as neutron star matter, which have more than one conserved charge, are reviewed.