Spin-down age: the key to magnetic field decay

TL;DR

This paper investigates the spin-down age of pulsars to understand magnetic field decay, proposing a new method that suggests the magnetic field decays by a factor of three over 4×10^4 to 3.5×10^5 years, and estimates pulsar birthrate.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to analyze magnetic field decay using spin-down ages, assuming a uniform decay law, applied to a specific pulsar sample.

Findings

Magnetic field decays three times within 4×10^4 to 3.5×10^5 years.

The decay follows a modified power-law.

Pulsar birthrate estimated at about 2.9 per century.

Abstract

The properties of the spin-down age are investigated. Based on assumption about a uniform magnetic field decay law we suggest a new method which allows us to shed light on magnetic field decay. This method is applied for following selection: isolated non-millisecond pulsars from the ATNF catalog are chosen. Pulsars in the selection are with the spin-down ages from 4 \cdot 10^4 to 2 \cdot 10^6 years. In order to avoid observational selection we take into account only pulsars which are closer to the Sun than 10 kpc. For this selection we restore the uniform magnetic field decay law. It appears that the magnetic field decays three times from 4 \cdot 10^4 to 3.5 \cdot 10^5 years. This function is approximated by modified power-law. We also estimate the birthrate of pulsars in our Galaxy and find that it should be about 2.9 pulsars per century.