On the nature of the galactic 2CG y-ray sources

Abstract

The identification of two y-ray sources of the COS-B catalogue with radio pulsars is used as an important hint for the identification of the rest of the population. The relevant distributions of y-ray pulsars visible at the Sun within the limiting sensitivity of COS-B are derived on the following assumptions: (i) the y-ray luminosity is a decreasing power law of the pulsar age, as indicated by current models; (ii) the scale height of pulsars at creation is equal to that of the supernova remnants; (iii) the pulsars’ birth rate and spatial distribution are those published by Taylor & Manchester (1977). As a preliminary result it is shown that 10 to 20 y-ray pulsars may be visible from the Earth with distributional parameters not distinguishable from those of the 2CG y-ray sources. We suggest therefore that a significant fraction of the unidentified galactic y-ray sources are pulsars.