2003/10/17 by J. van Leeuwen, Joeri van Leeuwen, van Leeuwen, Joeri +3
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Superconducting Materials and Applications #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0310483
4 pages, 2 figures. To appear in "Young Neutron Stars and Their Environments" (IAU Symposium 218, ASP Conference Proceedings), eds F. Camilo and B. M. Gaensler
arxiv created 2003/10/17 · openalex publication_date 2003/10/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Several recent papers conclude that radio-pulsar magnetic fields decay on a time-scale of 10 Myr, apparently contradicting earlier results. We have implemented the methods of these papers in our code and show that this preference for rapid field decay is caused by the assumption that the beaming fraction does not depend on the period. When we do include this dependence, we find that the observed pulsar properties are reproduced best when the modelled field does not decay. When we assume that magnetic fields of new-born neutron stars are from a distribution sufficiently wide to explain magnetars, the magnetic field and period distributions we predict for radio are pulsars wider than observed. Finally we find that the observed velocities overestimate the intrinsic velocity distribution.