Related papers: Particle Acceleration in Pair-Starved Pulsars
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…
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…
Particle acceleration in relativistic shocks of electron-positron plasmas with proton admixture is investigated through two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The upstream plasma, with a bulk Lorentz factor of $10$ and a…
The radiative acceleration of particles and the electrostatic potential fields that arise in low density plasmas hit by radiation produced by a transient, compact source are investigated. We calculate the dynamical evolution and asymptotic…
The motion of electrons and positrons in the vacuum magnetosphere of a neutron star with a surface magnetic field of B~10^12 G is considered. Particles created in the magnetosphere or falling into it from outside are virtually…
Electron-positron pair production by collision of photons is investigated in view of application to pulsar physics. We compute the absorption rate of individual gamma-ray photons by an arbitrary anisotropic distribution of softer photons,…
We examine a regime in which a linearly-polarized laser pulse with relativistic intensity irradiates a sub-critical plasma for much longer than the characteristic electron response time. A steady-state channel is formed in the plasma in…
Circularly polarized colliding laser pulses can create abundant electron-positron pair plasma [A. R. Bell and J. G. Kirk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 200403 (2008)], which scattering the incoming electromagnetic waves can prevent them from…
Understanding the physics of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars (MSPs) presents a number of challenges compared to that of the non-recycled pulsar population. Even though their fast rotation rates can produce high spin-down power and…
We explore particle accelerator electrodynamics in the magnetosphere of a rapidly rotating neutron star (NS). We address the importance of a self-consistent treatment of pair production, solving the Poisson equation describing the…
Electromagnetic waves due to electron-positron clouds (bunches), created by cascading processes in pulsar magnetospheres, have been proposed to explain the pulsar radio emission. In order to verify this hypothesis, we utilized for the first…
When a relativistically intense p-polarized laser pulse is grazingly incident onto a planar solid-state target, a slightly superluminal field structure is formed near the target surface due to the incident and reflected waves superposition.…
Pulsars, or more generally rotation powered neutron stars, are excellent factories of antimatter in the Galaxy, in the form of pairs of electrons and positrons. Electrons are initially extracted from the surface of the star by the intense…
Particle acceleration at magnetized purely perpendicular relativistic shocks in electron-ion plasmas are studied by means of two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Magnetized shocks with the upstream bulk Lorentz factor $\gamma_1 \gg…
For sufficiently strong magnetic fields and/or low temperatures, the neutron star surface may be in a condensed state with little gas or plasma above it. Such surface condensation can significantly affect the thermal emission from isolated…
In this paper we study the possibility of efficient pair production in a pulsar's magnetosphere. It has been shown that by means of the relativistic centrifugal force the electrostatic field exponentially amplifies. As a result the field…
A detailed analysis of electron-positron pair creation induced by a spatially nonuniform and static electric field from vacuum is presented. A typical example is provided by the Sauter potential. For this potential, we derive the analytic…
Where and how flares efficiently accelerate charged particles remains an unresolved question. Recent studies revealed that a "magnetic bottle" structure, which forms near the bottom of a large-scale reconnection current sheet above the…
We investigate a stationary pair production cascade in the outer magnetosphere of a spinning neutron star. The charge depletion due to a global current, causes a large electric field along the magnetic field lines. Migratory electrons…
In the canonical model of a pulsar, rotational energy is transmitted through the surrounding plasma via two electrical circuits, each connecting to the star over a small region known as a "polar cap." For a dipole-magnetized star, the polar…