slow pulsars and long period transients

Long period transients (LPTs) are an intriguing and exciting class of objects that are being increasingly observed currently. These are a new class of radio sources which have rotational periods from minutes to hours and, hence, are much longer than conventional pulsar sources. There are at least 12 LPT sources that have been detected till today.

In general, pulsar radio emissions are mostly understood to be due to the conversion of rotational energy into dipolar emission from a rotating, magnetized neutron star. However, the high periods of LPTs are not easily explained based on conventional pulsar emission ideas. In fact, they often violate the conventional death valley idea of pulsar emission. It is apparent that such sources are then a way to probe the pulsar emission mechanism and our pre-conceptions of the same in more detail.

We find that magentized WDs, with fields within the ranges of conventional observations, are adequate enough to explain the observations of some shorter LPTs and slow pulsars (periods ~ 100-1000 s), viz., PSR J0901-4046, GLEAM-X~J162759.5-523504.3, and GPM J1839-10. It is clear that realistic WDs arising from stellar evolution simulations are able to support pulsar emission and lie above the death line under certain hypotheses. We have also explored the possibility of extending the conventional pulsar emission picture to include multipolar magnetic fields. More rigorous study of possible emission mechanism and associated observational signatures could further constrain the model, as well as future multi-wavelength observations.