The Galactic Millisecond Pulsar Population

Abstract

Among the current sample of over 2000 radio pulsars known primarily in the disk of our Galaxy, millisecond pulsars now number almost 200. Due to the phenomenal success of blind surveys of the Galactic field, and targeted searches of Fermi gamma-ray sources, for the first time in over a decade, Galactic millisecond pulsars now outnumber their counterparts in globular clusters! In this paper, I briefly review earlier results from studies of the Galactic millisecond pulsar population and present new constraints based on a sample of 60 millisecond pulsars discovered by 20 cm Parkes multibeam surveys. I present a simple model of the population containing $\sim 30,000$ potentially observable millisecond pulsars with a luminosity function, radial distribution and scale height that matches the observed sample of objects. This study represents only a first step towards a more complete understanding of the parent population of millisecond pulsars in the Galaxy and I conclude with some suggestions for further study in this area.

Proceedings of IAUS 291 "Neutron Stars and Pulsars: Challenges and Opportunities after 80 years", J. van Leeuwen (ed.); 6 pages, 1 figure

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• Pevatron at the Galactic Center: Multi-Wavelength Signatures from Millisecond Pulsars
• Circumnuclear Media of Quiescent Supermassive Black Holes
• Targeted search for the stochastic gravitational-wave background from the galactic millisecond pulsar population
• Probing Ensemble Properties of Vortex-avalanche Pulsar Glitches with a Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background Search
• Detectability of continuous gravitational waves from magnetically deformed neutron stars