Birth and Evolution of Isolated Radio Pulsars

We investigate the birth and evolution of isolated radio pulsars using a population synthesis method, modeling the birth properties of the pulsars, their time evolution, and their detection in the Parkes and Swinburne Multibeam (MB) surveys. Together, the Parkes and Swinburne MB surveys [1, 2] have detected nearly 2/3 of the known pulsars and provide a remarkably homogeneous sample to compare with simulations. New proper motion measurements [3, 4] and an improved model of the distribution of free electrons in the interstellar medium, NE2001 [5], also make revisiting these issues particularly worthwhile. We present a simple population model that reproduces the actual observations well, and consider others that fail. We conclude that: pulsars are born in the spiral arms, with the birthrate of 2.8±0.5 pulsars/century peaking at a distance ∼3 kpc from the Galactic centre, and with mean initial speed of 380−60+40 km s−1; the birth spin period distribution extends to several hundred milliseconds, with no eviden...