Prospects for pulsars and pulsar associations in multi-messenger astrophysics with population synthesis

Population synthesis seeks to integrate the full framework of stellar evolution with predictions for observations of different products of said evolution, potentially allowing constraints to be placed on multiple evolutionary steps at the same time. It has become a central tool in gravitational-wave astronomy when simulating populations of compact object mergers and predicting merger rates over redshift, where it nevertheless faces the challenge of dealing with the high level of uncertainty surrounding massive stellar evolution, and the degeneracy between multiple physical assumptions when making predictions for a single kind of event. This degeneracy, however, could be lifted in part by accounting for a broader range of stages a star goes through during its life, as well as alternative outcomes. In this talk, I will explore the prospects of using these same tools to study observed populations of pulsars and pulsar associations – pulsar wind nebulae and halos. In particular, I will highlight current advances in supernova theory and stellar angular momentum evolution, and the potential for a more detailed picture of pulsar formation. I will also present ongoing work on the generation of synthetic pulsar association populations for the study of observations of current gamma-ray observatories, in particular HAWC, and for the prediction of observations by the future SWGO.