086419

The discovery of three millisecond pulsars (MSPs) swinging between an accretion and rotation powered states has provided evidence for the existence of a peculiar evolutionary phase of binary pulsars. These sources are known as .transitional. MSPs (tMSPs). We have recently identified the source CXOU J110926.4-650224 as a strong tMSP candidate. We propose simultaneous high-time resolution observations of this system using XMM-Newton (20 ks) and the VLT HAWK-I (3.5 hr) to: (i) search for correlations or anti-correlations between the X-ray and near infrared emissions down to time scales of tens of seconds and (ii) understand the mechanism of mode switching and (iii) whether it operates in all the tMSPs. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]