Radio pulsar populations

TL;DR

This paper reviews the statistical methods used to infer the properties of radio pulsar populations from biased observational data, highlighting current models' limitations and recent findings on neutron star evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of techniques to correct for selection effects in radio pulsar surveys and summarizes recent insights into pulsar population characteristics.

Findings

Current models are incomplete and have parameter covariances.

Recent data offers new insights into neutron star evolution.

Selection bias correction techniques are essential for accurate population inference.

Abstract

The goal of this article is to summarize the current state of play in the field of radio pulsar statistics. Simply put, from the observed sample of objects from a variety of surveys with different telescopes, we wish to infer the properties of the underlying sample and to connect these with other astrophysical populations (for example supernova remnants or X-ray binaries). The main problem we need to tackle is the fact that, like many areas of science, the observed populations are often heavily biased by a variety of selection effects. After a review of the main effects relevant to radio pulsars, I discuss techniques to correct for them and summarize some of the most recent results. Perhaps the main point I would like to make in this article is that current models to describe the population are far from complete and often suffer from strong covariances between input parameters. That said, there are a number of very interesting conclusions that can be made concerning the evolution of neutron stars based on current data. While the focus of this review will be on the population of isolated Galactic pulsars, I will also briefly comment on millisecond and binary pulsars as well as the pulsar content of globular clusters and the Magellanic Clouds.