Role of the Fan Beam Model in Population Synthesis of Isolated Radio Pulsars

Abstract

Abstract On the basis of the P sr P op P y software package, we developed an evolution model of population synthesis for isolated radio pulsars by incorporating the fan beam model, an alternative radio emission beam model to the widely used conal beam model. With proper choice of related models and parameters, we successfully reproduced the observational distributions of Galactic longitude (l) and latitude (b), spin period, period derivative, dispersion measure and 1.4 GHz flux density for the 1214 isolated pulsars discovered by the Parkes multibeam and Swinburne pulsar surveys. The size of the underlying population of radio-loud pulsars is found to be 2.27 × 106, which is larger than the underlying population of radio-loud pulsars simulated with the conal beam model. The model is used to estimate the number of isolated radio pulsars detected by the Galactic-plane pulsar survey with Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Approximately 2700 and 240 new isolated pulsars are expected to be discovered in the inner galactic plane (20° < l < 90°, ∣b∣ < 10°) and the outer galactic plane (150° < l < 210°, ∣b∣ < 10°), respectively. These numbers are smaller than those estimated by the evolution models with conal beams and the snapshot models.