2013/03/17 by Andrei Gruzinov, Gruzinov, Andrei
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1303.4094
openalex publication_date 2013/03/17 · openalex created_date 2022/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In Aristotelian Electrodynamics (AE), due to radiation over-damping, the\nvelocity rather than the acceleration of a charge is determined by the local\nelectromagnetic field. Treating electrons and positrons separately, AE seems to\ngive a faithful description of the flow of charges in a pulsar magnetosphere.\nAE might allow to calculate the pulsar emission in full detail, at all energies\nexcept the radio.\n But AE is not a full theory -- the plasma production processes must be added.\nHere we show that the pulsar magnetosphere and the resulting emission are\nsensitive to the plasma production rate near the light cylinder. In strong\npulsars (high production rate, due to photon-photon collisions), the number of\nfield lines closing beyond the light cylinder decreases. This reduces both the\npulsar efficiency (the ratio of the pulsed bolometric luminosity to the\nspin-down power) and the characteristic photon energy, in overall agreement\nwith the Fermi data.\n For weak pulsars (low production rate), our numerical implementation of AE\nworks stably and seems to be ready to calculate the lightcurves and spectra.\nBut for strong pulsars, the code (included) needs improvement or better\nunderstanding.\n