Modelling of isolated radio pulsars and magnetars on the fossil field hypothesis.pdfVIP

A Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 000–000 (0000) Printed 5 February 2008 (MN L T X style file v2.2) E Modelling of isolated radio pulsars and magnetars on the fossil field hypothesis Lilia Ferrario and Dayal Wickramasinghe Department of Mathematics, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia 6 0 0 Accepted. Received ; in original form 2 n a ABSTRACT J 2 We explore the hypothesis that the magnetic fields of neutron stars are of fossil 1 origin. For parametrised models of the distribution of magnetic flux on the Main Sequence and of the birth spin period of the neutron stars, we calculate the expected 1 v properties of isolated radio pulsars in the Galaxy using as our starting point the initial 8 mass function and star formation rate as a function of galacto-centric radius. We then 5 use the 1374 MHz Parkes Multi-Beam Survey of isolated radio pulsars to constrain the 2 parameters in our model and to deduce the required distribution of magnetic fields 1 on the main sequence. We find agreement with observations for a model with a star 0 formation rate that corresponds to a supernova rate of 2 per century in the Galaxy 6 from stars with masses in the range 8 −45M⊙ and predict 447,000 active pulsars in the