On the pulse--width statistics in radio pulsars. I. Importance of the interpulse emission

Abstract

We performed Monte Carlo simulations of different properties of pulsar radio emission, such as: pulsar periods, pulse-widths, inclination angles and rates of occurrence of interpulse emission (IP). We used recently available large data sets of the pulsar periods P, the pulse profile widths W and the magnetic inclination angle alpha. We also compiled the largest ever database of pulsars with interpulse emission, divided into the double-pole (DP-IP) and the single-pole (SP-IP) cases. Their distribution on the P - Pdot diagram strongly suggests a secular alignment of the magnetic axis from the originally random orientation. We derived possible parent distribution functions of important pulsar parameters by means of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov significance test using the available data sets (P, W, alpha and IP), different models of pulsar radio beam rho = rho(P) as well as different trial distribution functions of pulsar period and the inclination angles. The best suited parent period distribution function is the log-normal distribution, although the gamma function distribution cannot be excluded. The strongest constraint on derived model distribution functions was the requirement that the numbers of interpulses were exactly (within 1sigma errors) at the observed level of occurrences. We found that a suitable model distribution function for the inclination angle is the complicated trigonometric function which has two local maxima, one near 0 deg and the other near 90 deg. The former and the latter implies the right rates of IP occurrence. It is very unlikely that the pulsar beam deviates significantly from the circular cross-section. We found that the upper limit for the average beaming factor fb describing a fraction of the full sphere (called also beaming fraction) covered by a pulsar beam is about 10%. This implies that the number of the neutron stars in the Galaxy might be underestimated.

arXiv comment35 pages, 18 figures

References in corpus (27)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey: I. Observing and Data Analysis Systems, Discovery and Timing of 100 Pulsars
• Transient radio bursts from rotating neutron stars
• The Velocity Distribution of Isolated Radio Pulsars
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: VI. Discovery and timing of 142 pulsars and a Galactic population analysis
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: III. Young pulsars & the discovery and timing of 200 pulsars
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: IV. Discovery of 180 pulsars and parameters for 281 previously known pulsars
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey -- II. Discovery and Timing of 120 Pulsars
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey: V. Finding binary and millisecond pulsars
• Revised Pulsar Spindown
• Profile and polarization characteristics of energetic pulsars
• Radio detection of LAT PSRs J1741-2054 and J2032+4127: no longer just gamma-ray pulsars
• The Swinburne Intermediate Latitude Pulsar Survey
• Further Searches for RRATs in the Parkes Multi-Beam Pulsar Survey
• Proper motion, age and initial spin period of PSR J0538+2817 in S147
• Discovery of 28 pulsars using new techniques for sorting pulsar candidates
• Proper Motion Measurements of Pulsar B1951+32 in the Supernova Remnant CTB 80
• The population of pulsars with interpulses and the implications for beam evolution
• Gamma ray astrophysics: the EGRET results
• The role of beam geometry in population statistics and pulse profiles of radio and gamma-ray pulsars
• Pulsar Discovery by Global Volunteer Computing
• Pulsar magnetic alignment and the pulsewidth-age relation
• The main- interpulse interaction of PSR B1702-19
• Polarisation measurements of five pulsars with interpulses
• On the long and short nulls, modes and interpulse emission of radio pulsar B1944+17
• Discovery and timing of the first 8gr8 Cygnus survey pulsars
• On the pulse-width statistics in radio pulsars

Cited by in corpus (31)

• Wide-Band, Low-Frequency Pulse Profiles of 100 Radio Pulsars with LOFAR
• Radio pulsars: already fifty years!
• A Fan Beam Model for Radio Pulsars. I. Observational Evidence
• On the beam properties of radio pulsars with interpulse emission
• PEACE: Pulsar Evaluation Algorithm for Candidate Extraction -- A software package for post-analysis processing of pulsar survey candidates
• The Period-Width relationship for radio pulsars revisited
• A coherent acceleration search of the Parkes multi-beam pulsar survey - techniques and the discovery and timing of 16 pulsars
• Comparing models of the periodic variations in spin-down and beam-width for PSR B1828-11
• On the Apparent Nulls and Extreme Variability of PSR J1107-5907
• On the pulse-width statistics in radio pulsars. II. Importance of the core profile components
• The emission of interpulses by a 6.45-hour period coherent radio transient
• On the pulse-width statistics in radio pulsars. III. Importance of the conal profile components
• Periodic Q-mode modulation in PSR J1825$-$0935 (PSR B1822$-$09)
• On the Pulse Intensity Modulation of PSR B0823+26
• Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey IV: The Period Dependence of Component Widths of Pulsars
• Statistics of interpulse radio pulsars - the key to solving the alignment/counter-alignment problem
• Investigating multi-frequency pulse profiles of PSRs B0329+54 and B1642-03 in an inverse Compton scattering (ICS) model
• On the mean profiles of radio pulsars II: Reconstruction of complex pulsar light-curves and other new propagation effects
• Periodic and Phase-locked Modulation in PSR B1929+10 Observed with FAST
• Emission Variation of a Long-period Pulsar Discovered by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST)
• Relativistic spin precession in the binary PSR J1141$-$6545
• Multi-frequency radio observations of the radio-loud magnetar XTE J1810-197
• Isolated pulsar population synthesis with simulation-based inference
• The Chinese pulsar timing array data release I. Polarimetry for 56 millisecond pulsars
• A short review of the pulsar magnetic inclination angles (II)
• Detection of precessing circumpulsar disks
• Angular Dependence of Coherent Radio Emission from Magnetars with Multipolar Magnetic Fields
• Evidence for the spin-kick alignment of pulsars from the statistics of their magnetic inclinations
• Imprint of magnetic obliquity in apparent spin-down of radio pulsars
• Search for interpulses in a complete sample of pulsars at a frequency of 111 MHz
• Main and interpulse interaction in PSRs J1842+0358 and J1926+0737: evidence for interpole communication