A lower limit for the birth rate of pulsars

Narayan, R.; Vivekanand, M.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/2289/2384

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DC Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Narayan, R.	-
dc.contributor.author	Vivekanand, M.	-
dc.date.accessioned	2007-05-25T05:34:49Z	-
dc.date.available	2007-05-25T05:34:49Z	-
dc.date.issued	1981-04-16	-
dc.identifier.citation	Nature, 1981, Vol.290, p571-572	en
dc.identifier.issn	0028-0836	-
dc.identifier.issn	1476-4687 (online)	-
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/2384	-
dc.description	Restricted Access.	en
dc.description.abstract	Using experimental data on observed pulsars, we have estimated a lower limit for the birth rate of pulsars in our Galaxy to be B 1b = 0.0111 (plusminus0.0050) K pulsars yr-1 where K, the 'beam factor', allows for the possibility that only a fraction of all pulsars is beamed towards the Earth. If we take1 K to be 5, we obtain a mean birth rate of 1 pulsar per 18 yr while we can place a firmer lower bound with 95% confidence of 1 per 50 yr. Two important new features of the present approach are: (1) we do not assume any model for pulsars; (2) we have allowed for selection effects (in a model independent way). Apart from obtaining a more reliable number for the birth rate of pulsars, we conclude that the quantity P/(2P dot), where P is the period of the pulsar and P dot is its time derivative, is probably a good measure of age in "young" pulsars up to half a million years old, and that selection effects which have been neglected in all earlier calculations are significant. The present calculation reduces the discrepancy between pulsar and supernova birth rates.	en
dc.format.extent	103384 bytes	-
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	-
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	Nature Publishing Group	en
dc.relation.uri	http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/290571a0	en
dc.rights	1981 Nature Publishing Group	en
dc.title	A lower limit for the birth rate of pulsars	en
dc.type	Article	en
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (A&A)

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