Orthogonal pulsars as a key test for pulsar evolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT At present, there is no direct information about evolution of inclination angle χ between magnetic and rotational axes in radio pulsars. As to theoretical models of pulsar evolution, they predict both the alignment, i.e. evolution of inclination angle χ to 0°, and its counter-alignment, i.e. evolution to 90°. In this paper, we demonstrate that the statistics of interpulse pulsars can give us the key test to solve the alignment/counter-alignment problem as the number of orthogonal interpulse pulsars (χ ≈ 90°) drastically depends on the evolution trajectory.