Distances and moments of inertia of Fermi Pulsars

Abstract

Measurement of distances and moments of inertia of pulsars must be useful, for instance, for three-dimensional mapping of the dispersion and rotation measures, constraining the nuclear equation of state, etc. The distances and moments of inertia can be measured by fitting the gamma-ray lightcurves of pulsars, because the gamma-ray emission seems to be governed by easily calculable physics. The (first-principle) theoretical lightcurves have been computed only for weak pulsars (pair production near the light cylinder much smaller than Goldreich-Julian [1] per rotation), and at insufficient accuracy; but, since this computation has been done by a self-taught numericist, it must be possible to improve the theoretical accuracy for weak pulsars, and also to extend the computation to non-weak pulsars. To invite the computational effort of better-equipped researchers, we describe an (entirely obvious) procedure for measuring the distances and moments of inertia for weak pulsars.