Evolution of Crab Pulsar: Magnetic Inclination Angle and Spin

TL;DR

This paper models the evolution of the Crab pulsar by integrating various physical effects, successfully reproducing observed parameters and highlighting the significance of bulk viscosity in pulsar evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive routine evolution model including multiple effects and demonstrates its effectiveness in explaining Crab pulsar observations.

Findings

Bulk viscosity plays a crucial role in pulsar evolution.

Electromagnetic torque and accretion may be overestimated for Crab pulsar.

The model accurately predicts the small change in magnetic inclination angle.

Abstract

The well-observed Crab pulsar helps one to uncover the underlying knowledge about pulsar evolution. The routine evolution model simultaneously describes the spin-down caused by the magnetic dipole radiation (MDR) and gravitational wave radiation (GWR), damping of the free-body precession owing to the bulk viscosity, and GWR-induced quenching of the magnetic inclination angle $\chi$. We explore the pulsar evolution based on this routine model supplemented with the effects of shear viscosity, r-mode, electromagnetic torque, and accretion, respectively, with the stellar thermal evolution as an important input. The impact of shear viscosity on radio-pulsar evolution is negligible, as it only slightly increases the magnetic inclination angle and promotes spin-down in magnetars. Under the observational limit for its saturation amplitude, the r-mode also turns out to be completely negligible. Yet, the electromagnetic torque (under certain conditions), along with the accretion based on our three-dimensional fallback disk accretion model, are all shown to suppress the growth of the magnetic inclination angle. When applied to the Crab pulsar, the routine model best reproduces the magnetic inclination angle $\chi$, the spin period $P$, and the spin period derivative $\Dot{P}$ simultaneously, indicating the important role of bulk viscosity. The inclusion of the electromagnetic torque and accretion works even worse, suggesting these two factors perhaps are overestimated for Crab pulsar. Intriguingly, the calculated magnetic inclination angle derivative $\Dot{\chi}$ is $(6.3\times 10^{-3} - 0.3)\, {\rm degree/century}$ with the routine model, also in agreement with the observed tiny $\Dot{\chi} = 0.62\, {\rm degree/century}$.