Estimates of the Surface Magnetic Field Strength of Radio Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to estimate the surface magnetic field strength of radio pulsars by accounting for the angle between the spin and magnetic axes, revealing a wide range of magnetic field strengths.

Contribution

A novel approach to calculate the magnetic dipole axis angle and its impact on magnetic field estimates for pulsars.

Findings

Magnetic field estimates can vary by an order of magnitude when considering the angle $eta$.

Surface magnetic fields of pulsars range from 10^8 to 10^14 G.

The method provides more accurate magnetic field estimates for known pulsars.

Abstract

We investigate the geometry of the magnetic field of rotation-powered pulsars. A new method for calculating an angle ($\beta$) between the spin and magnetic dipole axes of a neutron star (NS) in the ejector stage is considered within the frame of the magnetic dipole energy loss mechanism. We estimate the surface magnetic field strength ($B_{\rm ns}$) for a population of known neutron stars in the radio pulsar (ejector) stage. The evaluated $B_{\rm ns}(\beta)$ may differ by an order of magnitude from the values without considering the angle $\beta$. It is shown that $B_{\rm ns}(\beta)$ lies in the range $10^{8}$--$10^{14}\,\text{G}$ for a known population of short and middle periodic radio pulsars.