Morphology and characteristics of radio pulsars

Abstract

This review describes the observational properties of radio pulsars, fast rotating neutron stars, emitting radio waves. After the introduction we give a list of milestones in pulsar research. The following chapters concentrate on pulsar morphology: the characteristic pulsar parameters such as pulse shape, pulsar spectrum, polarization and time dependence. We give information on the evolution of pulsars with frequency since this has a direct connection with the emission heights, as postulated in the radius to frequency mapping (RFM) concept. We deal successively with the properties of normal (slow) pulsars and of millisecond (fast-recycled) pulsars. The final chapters give the distribution characteristics of the presently catalogued 1300 objects.Comment: 33 pages, PDF with 30 PostScript figures, see http://springerlink.metapress.com/link.asp?id=d6k3a6wunb138dpl Accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysivs Review