The X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission XMM-Newton is ESA's largest observatory so
far; it is dedicated to explore the Universe in the 0.2 - 15 keV X-ray band of
the electromagnetic spectrum. Because of its large collecting area very faint
sources not accessible before can be observed and it is therefore the long
awaited instrument to study young pulsars and neutron stars in supernova
remnants, cooling neutron stars and millisecond pulsars at X-ray energies. The
high throughput of the instruments, which all are operated simultaneously,
provide high resolution spectral, spatial and temporal information from a
source during a single observation and make XMM-Newton unique and best suited
for pulsar studies. In this article we briefly describe the instrument
capabilities useful for pulsar observations and provide information on the
timing accuracy on the relative and absolute scale. We further provide
scientific results from observations of the Crab-pulsar, PSR J1617-5055 near
RCW 103, of young neutron stars in the supernova remnants RX J0852-4622,
Puppis-A and RCW 103 including 1E161348-5055.1 which is identified to be the
second binary in a supernova remnant. In addition we report on observations of
the cooling neutron star PSR B1055-52 and on the millisecond pulsar PSR
J0030+0451 which all were observed by XMM-Newton during the first two years of
scientific operation.Comment: 23 pages, 22 figures, 4 tables. To appear in the Proceedings of the
270.WE-Heraeus Seminar on Neutron Stars, Pulsars and Supernova Remnants, Jan
21-25, Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, eds W. Becker, H. Lesch & J. Truemper.
Proceedings available as MPE-Report 278. The paper with high resolution
images can be obtained from
ftp://ftp.xray.mpe.mpg.de/people/web/Becker_Aschenbach.pd
