Luminosities of radio Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper reviews the various models and observational studies of radio pulsar luminosities, discussing their properties, differences between globular cluster and Galactic disk pulsars, and unresolved questions in the field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of existing pulsar luminosity models, observational biases, and the comparison between different pulsar populations.

Findings

Luminosity relates to magnetospheric plasma and beam geometry.

Recent studies suggest similar luminosity distributions for globular cluster and Galactic disk pulsars.

Models include spin parameter dependence and parameter-independent fits like power law and lognormal.

Abstract

Luminosity is an intrinsic property of radio pulsars related to the properties of the magnetospheric plasma and the beam geometry, and inversely proportional to the observing frequency. In traditional models, luminosity has been considered as a function of the spin parameters of pulsars. On the other hand, parameter independent models like power law and lognormal have been also used to fit the observed luminosities. Some of the older studies on pulsar luminosities neglected observational biases, but all of the recent studies tried to model observational effects as accurately as possible. Luminosities of pulsars in globular clusters and in the Galactic disk have been studied separately. Older studies concluded that these two categories of pulsars have different luminosity distributions, but the most recent study concluded that those are the same. This article reviews all significant works on pulsar luminosities and discusses open questions.