Pair multiplicities and pulsar death
Feb, 2001Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
Through a simple model of particle acceleration and pair creation above the polar caps of rotation-powered pulsars, we calculate the height of the pair-formation front (PFF) and the dominant photon emission mechanism for the pulsars in the Princeton catalog. We find that for most low- and moderate-field pulsars, the height of the pair formation front and the final Lorentz factor of the primary beam is set by nonresonant inverse Compton scattering (NRICS), in the Klein-Nishina limit. NRICS is capable of creating pairs over a wide range of pulsar parameters without invoking a magnetic field more complicated than a centered dipole, although we still require a reduced radius of curvature for most millisecond pulsars. For short-period pulsars, the dominant process is curvature radiation, while for extremely high-field pulsars, it is resonant inverse Compton scattering (RICS). The dividing point between NRICS dominance and curvature dominance is very temperature-dependent: large numbers of pulsars dominated by NRICS at a stellar temperature of K are dominated by curvature at K. We apply these results to pulsar death-line calculations and to the issue of particle injection into the Crab Nebula.Note:
- 14 pages, 7 figures, to appear in ApJ
References(32)
Figures(0)