The Thousand-Pulsar-Array program on MeerKAT -- IX The time-averaged properties of the observed pulsar population by B. Posselt et al. on Tuesday 22 November

We present the largest single survey to date of average profiles of radio

pulsars, observed and processed using the same telescope and data reduction

software. Specifically, we present measurements for 1170 pulsars, observed by

the Thousand Pulsar Array (TPA) programme at the 64-dish SARAO MeerKAT radio

telescope, in a frequency band from 856 to 1712 MHz. We provide rotation

measures (RM), dispersion measures, flux densities and polarization properties.

The catalogue includes 254 new RMs that substantially increase the total number

of known pulsar RMs. Our integration times typically span over 1000 individual

rotations per source. We show that the radio (pseudo)luminosity has a strong,

shallow dependence on the spin-down energy, proportional to

$\dot{E}^{0.15\pm0.04}$, that contradicts some previous proposals of population

synthesis studies. In addition, we find a significant correlation between the

steepness of the observed flux density spectra and $\dot{E}$, and correlations

of the fractional linear polarization with $\dot{E}$, the spectral index, and

the pulse width, which we discuss in the context of what is known about pulsar

radio emission and how pulsars evolve with time. On the whole, we do not see

significant correlations with the estimated surface magnetic field strength,

and the correlations with $\dot{E}$ are much stronger than those with the

characteristic age. This finding lends support to the suggestion that magnetic

dipole braking may not be the dominant factor for the evolution of pulsar

rotation over the lifetimes of pulsars. A public data release of the

high-fidelity time-averaged pulse profiles in full polarization accompanies our

catalogue.

arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.11849v1