The radio luminosity distribution of pulsars in 47 Tucanae

Abstract

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array to seek the integrated radio flux from all the pulsars in the core of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. We have detected an extended region of radio emission and have calibrated its flux against the flux distribution of the known pulsars in the cluster. We find the total 20-cm radio flux from the pulsars in the cluster to be S= 2.0 +/- 0.3 mJy. This implies the lower limit to the radio luminosity distribution to be minL1400= 0.4 mJy kpc2 and the size of the observable pulsar population to be N<~ 30.