Young rotation-powered pulsars as ultraluminous X-ray sources
: Aleksei S Medvedev, Juri Poutanen
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS
: 2013
: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
: MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
: MON NOT R ASTRON SOC
: 3
: 431
: 3
: 2690
: 2702
: 13
: 0035-8711
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stt369
Using the observed XLF of sources in the nearby galaxies and the condition that the pulsar XLF does not exceed that, we find the allowed region for the parameters describing the birth period distribution. We find that the mean pulsar period should be greater than 10-40 ms. These results are consistent with the constraints obtained from the X-ray luminosity of core-collapse supernovae. We estimate that the contribution of the rotation-powered pulsars to the ULX population is at a level exceeding 3 per cent. For a wide birth period distribution, this fraction grows with luminosity and above 10(40) erg s(-1) pulsars can dominate the ULX population.