Finding fast spinning neutron stars using XMM-Newton

The discovery of millisecond X-ray pulsations in neutron-star low-mass X-ray binaries has until now only been done with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. However, XMM-Newton has also pointed at some of these systems during an outburst and shown that it can clearly detect the pulsations as well. In fact, XMM-Newton detects the pulsations with high enough significance to have discovered them, had they still been unknown. Thus, XMM-Newton can also be used to search for pulsations. Moreover, for the faintest systems XMM-Newton is even more sensitive to detect pulsations than RXTE due to the significantly less background count rate for XMM-Newton.