Population Synthesis of Radio and Gamma-ray Pulsars in the Fermi Era

Peter L. Gonthier, Caleb Billman, Alice K. Harding, Isabelle A. Grenier, Marco Pierbattista

Published 2011-03-09Version 1

We present results of our pulsar population synthesis of normal pulsars from the Galactic disk using our previously developed computer code. On the same footing, we use slot gap and outer gap models for gamma-ray emission from normal pulsars to obtain statistics of radio-loud and radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars. From recently improved understanding of HII and star forming regions in the Galaxy, we develop a new surface density model of the birth location of neutron stars. We explore models of neutron star evolution with magnetic field-decay, and with different initial period and magnetic field distributions. We present preliminary results including simulated population statistics that are compared with recent detections by Fermi of normal, isolated pulsars.