Related papers: On the maximum pair multiplicity of pulsar cascade…
We study the efficiency of pair production in polar caps of young pulsars under a variety of conditions to estimate the maximum possible multiplicity of pair plasma in pulsar magnetospheres. We develop a semi-analytic model for calculation…
We discuss the creation of electron-positron cascades in the context of pulsar polar cap acceleration models and derive several useful analytic and semi-analytic results for the spatial extent and energy response of the cascade. Instead of…
Time-dependent cascades of electron-positron pairs are thought to be the main source of plasma in pulsar magnetospheres and a primary ingredient to explain the nature of pulsar radio emission, a longstanding open problem in high-energy…
We present numerical simulations of electron-positron pair cascades in the magnetospheres of magnetic neutron stars for a wide range of surface fields (B_p = 10^{12}--10^{15} G), rotation periods (0.1--10 s), and field geometries. This has…
I argue that the problem of electromagnetically driven electron-positron cascades in magnetospheres of neutron stars must be addressed starting from first principles. I describe a general numerical algorithm for doing self-consistent…
Pulsar magnetospheres are thought to be filled with electron-positron plasma generated in pair cascades. The driving mechanism of these cascades is the emission of gamma-ray photons and their conversion into pairs via Quantum…
We present numerical simulations of the electron-positron plasma creation process in a simple neutron star magnetosphere. We have developed a set of cascade `kernels', which represent the endpoint of the pair cascades resulting from…
We investigate the conditions required for the production of electron-positron pairs above a pulsar polar cap (PC) and the influence of pair production on the energetics of the primary particle acceleration. Assuming space-charge limited…
We present the results of the calculation of the electron-positron pair creation probability by the circularly polarized electromagnetic wave during its propagation in underdense collisionless plasmas. The dependence of the probability on…
Electron-positron pair production in an arbitrary polarized ultrastrong laser field is investigated in the first order perturbation approximation in which the Volkov states are used for convenient calculation of scattering amplitude and…
Modifications to polar-gap models for pulsars are discussed for the case where the surface magnetic field, $B_\S$, of the neutron star is strong. For $B\ga4\times10^8\rm\,T$, the curvature $\gamma$-quanta emitted tangentially to the curved…
By taking the spin and polarization of the electrons, positrons and photons into account in the strong-field QED processes of nonlinear Compton emission and pair production, we find that the growth rate of QED cascades in ultra-intense…
We consider the electron-positron plasma generation processes in the magnetospheres of magnetars - neutron stars with strong surface magnetic fields, B = 10^(14) - 10^(15) G. We show that the photon splitting in a magnetic field, which is…
Here we briefly report on first results of self-consistent simulation of non-stationary electron-positron cascades in the polar cap of pulsar using specially developed hybrid PIC/Monte-Carlo numerical code. We consider the case of…
Although existing technology cannot yet directly produce fields at the Schwinger level, experimental facilities can already explore strong-field QED phenomena by taking advantage of the Lorentz boost of energetic electron beams. Recent…
Neutron star magnetic fields may have polar caps (PC) that are offset from the dipole axis, through field-line sweepback near the light cylinder or non-symmetric currents within the star. The effects of such offsets on electron-positron…
We study nonperturbative multiphoton electron-positron pair creation in ultrastrong electromagnetic fields formed by two counterpropagating pulses with elliptic polarization. Our numerical approach allows us to take into account the…
The interaction of high energy electrons, positrons, and photons with intense laser pulses is studied in head-on collision geometry. It is shown that electrons and/or positrons undergo a cascade-type process involving multiple emissions of…
The study of physical processes associated with particle acceleration in the open field line region above the polar cap (PC) of an isolated neutron star (NS) plays a fundamental role in our understanding and interpretation of high-energy…
We report on the first self-consistent multidimensional particle-in-cell numerical simulations of non-homogeneous pair discharges in polar caps of rotation-powered pulsars. By introducing strong inhomogeneities in the initial plasma…