2001/02/06 by Bing Zhang, Alice K. Harding, Zhang, Bing +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0102097
6 pages with 1 figure, to appear in the Proceedings of "Soft Gamma Repeaters: The Rome 2000 Mini-Workshop" (eds: M. Feroci and S. Mereghetti), 16 October 2000, Rome - CNR Headquarters, to be published on a special issue of the Mem.S.A.It
arxiv created 2001/02/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Photon splitting is a QED process that can potentially suppress pair production in the inner magnetosphere of a pulsar with a super-strong magnetic field, and hence, may quench radio emission from these objects. While it is unknown how many splitting modes really operate in super-critical fields, we derive gap parameters of a high magnetic field pulsar for both the vacuum-type gap and the space-charge-limited flow accelerator under the assumption that all three splitting modes permitted by QED operate. The competition between photon splitting and pair production depends on the gap parameters, and the ``photon-splitting-dominant'' line for both cases are derived. We discuss the implications of these results and the possible connection of the high magnetic field pulsars with the anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft gamma-ray repeaters which are conjectured to be magnetars.