Does a strong particle accelerator arise very close to the light cylinder in a pulsar magnetosphere?
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
2015-06-19 v1
Abstract
We examine if an efficient particle acceleration takes place by a magnetic-field-aligned electric field near the light cylinder in a rotating neutron star magnetosphere. Constructing the electric current density with the actual motion of collision-less plasmas, we express the rotationally induced, Goldreich-Julian charge density as a function of position. It is demonstrated that the 'light cylinder gap', which emits very high energy photons via curvature process by virtue of a strong magnetic-field-aligned electric field very close to the light cylinder, will not arise in an actual pulsar magnetosphere.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1403.7300,
title = {Does a strong particle accelerator arise very close to the light cylinder in a pulsar magnetosphere?},
author = {Kouichi Hirotani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.7300},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
3 pages, 1 figure; Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society Letters in press