Population statistics of radio and γ-ray pulsars from the Galactic disk

Abstract

We present results of our population synthesis of normal and millisecond pulsars from the Galactic disk. Over the past several years, a program has been developed to simulate pulsar birth, evolution, and emission using Monte Carlo techniques. We have added to the program the capability to simulate millisecond pulsars, which are old, recycled pulsars with extremely short periods. We model the spatial distribution of millisecond pulsars by assuming they start with a random kick velocity and then evolve through the Galactic potential. We use a polar cap/slot gap model for gamma‐ray emission from both millisecond and normal pulsars. We also include gamma‐ray emission from an outer‐gap model to compare the statistics of radio‐loud and radio‐faint gamma‐ray pulsars on the same footing as pulsars from our polar cap/slot gap model. From our studies of radio pulsars that have clearly identifiable core and cone components, in which we fit the polarization sweep as well as the pulse profiles to constrain the viewing...