Radio pulsar populations

Abstract

The goal of this article is to summarize the current state of play in the field of radio pulsar statistics. Simply put, from the observed sample of objects from a variety of surveys with different telescopes, we wish to infer the properties of the underlying sample and to connect these with other astrophysical populations (for example supernova remnants or X-ray binaries). The main problem we need to tackle is the fact that, like many areas of science, the observed populations are often heavily biased by a variety of selection effects. After a review of the main effects relevant to radio pulsars, I discuss techniques to correct for them and summarize some of the most recent results. Perhaps the main point I would like to make in this article is that current models to describe the population are far from complete and often suffer from strong covariances between input parameters. That said, there are a number of very interesting conclusions that can be made concerning the evolution of neutron stars based on current data. While the focus of this review will be on the population of isolated Galactic pulsars, I will also briefly comment on millisecond and binary pulsars as well as the pulsar content of globular clusters and the Magellanic Clouds.

16 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Proceedings of ICREA Workshop on The High-Energy Emission from Pulsars and their Systems, Sant Cugat, Spain, 2010 April 12-16 (Springer)

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• The pulsar spectral index distribution
• The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Survey overview and initial pulsar discoveries
• The High Time Resolution Universe Survey VI: An Artificial Neural Network and Timing of 75 Pulsars
• Gravitational Collider Physics via Pulsar-Black Hole Binaries
• Markov chain Monte Carlo population synthesis of single radio pulsars in the Galaxy
• The Galactic Millisecond Pulsar Population
• Packed Ultra-wideband Mapping Array (PUMA): Astro2020 RFI Response
• Light-element abundance variations in globular clusters
• Do Pulsar Radio Fluxes violate the Inverse-Square Law?
• The effective magnetic field decay of radio pulsars: insights from the statistical properties of their spin frequency's second derivatives
• Modeling pulsar time noise with long term power law decay modulated by short term oscillations of the magnetic fields of neutron stars
• Testing the Accretion-induced Field-decay and Spin-up Model for Recycled Pulsars
• Seeking the nearest neutron stars using a new local electron density map