Population Statistics of Normal Isolated, Radio and Gamma-ray Pulsars from the Galactic Plane

We present results of a pulsar population synthesis of normal ordinary pulsars in the Galactic plane. Over the past several years, we have developed a program to simulate pulsar birth, evolution, and emission using Monte Carlo techniques. We model the spatial distribution of pulsars by assuming they are born with a random kick velocity and then evolve them within the Galactic potential. We assume that pulsars are standard candles using a new relationship between core and cone emission suggested by recent studies, which we also apply to millisecond pulsars. 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 geometry, we develop a model describing the ratio of radio core-to-cone peak fluxes. In this model, we find that short period pulsars are more cone-dominated than in our previous studies. We use both a low and high altitude slot gap model for describing the gamma-ray emission. We also include gamma-ray emission from an outer-gap model to compare the statistics of radio-loud and radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars on the same footing as pulsars from our slot gap, polar cap model. We present the preliminary results of our recent study and the implications for observing these pulsars with GLAST and AGILE.

We express our gratitude for the generous support of the National Science Foundation (REU and AST-0307365), the Michigan Space Grant Consortium and the NASA Astrophysics Theory Program.