have focused on key areas that are relevant to later chapters. For an excellent overall
introduction to pulsars, Handbook of Pulsar Astronomy (Lorimer and Kramer 2004) is highly
recommended. In summary we briefly cover the formation of pulsars, emission mechanisms,
drifting sub-pulses, nulling, mode changes, bright and giant pulses, characteristic age,
braking index, interstellar medium, dispersion measure, arrival times, timing noise …