As can be seen from the “ diagram” in Figure 3
, normal and millisecond pulsars are distinct
populations. The differences in
and
imply fundamentally different magnetic field strengths and
ages. Treating the pulsar as a rotating magnetic dipole, one may show [185
] that the surface magnetic field
strength
and the characteristic age
.
Lines of constant and
are drawn on Figure 3
, from which we infer typical values of
and
for the normal pulsars and
and
for the millisecond pulsars. For the rate of
loss of kinetic energy, sometimes called the spin-down luminosity, we have
. The lines of
constant
shown on Figure 3
show that the most energetic objects are the very young normal pulsars
and the most rapidly spinning millisecond pulsars.
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