Pulsars and neutron stars/History of the theoretical understanding of pulsars

Introduction

In this section we first describe advances in the understanding of the interior of neutron stars, then the magnetosphere and emission and finally the pulsar population.

Glitches and the neutron star interior

Even before the discovery of the first pulsar, the existence of neutron stars had been predicted (Baade & Zwicky 1934). It was therefore clear that neutron stars are "made up of neutrons", but it wasn't until the discovery of the first glitch in the vela pulsar that it became possible to directly probe the interior of a neutron star. Baym, Pethick & Pines (1969) showed that matter in the interior of a typical neutron star is a mixture of three degenerate interacting quantum liquids — neutrons, protons and electrons with the neutrons dominating. They suggested that this mixture would be bounded on the inside by a superdense core and on the outside by a solid mantle. They suggested that there would be superfluid states in the interior. They (Baym et al. 1969) then noted that if the glitch in the Vela pulsar was caused by a "star quake" then the event demonstrates that the interior of the pulsar is a superfluid. Their model was able to explain the sudden change in spin-frequency and also the characteristic relaxation of a glitch after the event.

Pines & Alpar (1984) provided a review related to superfluidity in the Vela, Crab and PSR B0525+21 and discussed the possibility of superfluidity in the millisecond pulsar population.

Pines (1974) showed how observations of pulsars wobbling (free-precession) can be used to study the structure and properties of the associated neutron star.

The pulsar emission and geometry

The population of neutron stars and pulsars

Falnnery & van den Heuvel 1975
Radhakrishnan (1984) - the origins of pulsar velocities
van den Heuvel & Taam (1984) - evolutionary histories
Narayan & Ostriker 1990 - pulsar populations
Bhattacharya, van den Heuvel (1991) - formation and evolution of binary and msps
van den Heuvel (1992) - pulsar planets
[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995MNRAS.275L..16L Lorimer, Lyne, Anderson (1995) - the pulsar velocity-magnetic field correlation
Lorimer et al. (1995) - the birth rate of msps
van Kerkwijk, van Paradijs, Zuiderwijk (1995) - masses of neutron stars
Kaspi et al. (1996) - neutron-star birth kicks
Cadez, Galicic, Calvani (1997) - free precession
Hansen & Phinney (1997) - pulsar kick velocity distribution
Spuit & Phinney (1998) - birth kicks as the origin of pulsar rotation
Lorimer et al. (1993) - birthrate and initial spin periods
Lyne & Lorimer 1994 - pulsar velocities
Cheng, Ho & Ruderman (1986) - rapidly spinning pulsars
Thorsett & Chakrabarty (1999) - neutron star masses
Brazier & Johnston (1999) - implications of radio-quiet neutron stars
Chakrabarty et al. (2003) - maximum spin frequency of neutron stars
Lattimer & Prakash (2004) - the physics of neutron stars
Lipunov et al. (2005) - population of pulsar-blcak hole binaries
Hobbs et al. (2005) presented a statistical study of a large number of pulsar proper motions]
Cordes et al. (2006) - theory of parabolic arcs
Ng & romani (2007) birth kick distributions
Zhang et al. (2011) – pulsar masses
Tauris & can den Heuvel (2014) - formation of the triple system
Bates et al., (2014) - PSRPOPPy
Kerr et al., (2015) - limits of planet formation around young pulsars
Wielebinski, Vaughan & Large (1969) first suggested that pulsars are galactic objects associated with the galactic disk or spiral arms.
The theoretical understanding of the properties of X-ray pulsars was summarised in White, Swank & Holt (1983).
Blair & Candy (1985) - X-ray pulsar population and birthrate.
Lyne, Manhcester & Taylor (1985) discussed the galactic population of pulsars in detail.
Narayan 1987 considered the birthrate and initial spin period of isolated radio pulsars.
Theory of planet formation: Rasio, Shapiro & Teukolsky 1992
Gonthier et al. (2005) simulated the Gould Belt and showed that pulsars should exist there.

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