2003/10/21 by Janusz Gil, Yuri Lyubarsky, George I. Melikidze · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/379972
published as Astrophys.J. 600 (2004) 872-882
arxiv created 2003/10/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We consider the curvature radiation of the point-like charge moving relativistically along curved magnetic field lines through a pulsar magnetospheric electron-positron plasma. We demonstrate that the radiation power is largely suppressed as compared with the vacuum case, but still at a considerable level, high enough to explain the observed pulsar luminosities. The emitted radiation is polarized perpendicularly to the plane of the curved magnetic filed lines coincides with which can freely escape from the magnetospheric plasma. Our results strongly support the coherent curvature radiation by the spark-associated solitons as a plausible mechanism of pulsar radio emission.