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Radio emission from polar caps in pulsars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

Jan Kuijpers
Affiliation:
Sterrekundig Instituut, P.O. Box 80.000, NL-3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Martin Volwerk
Affiliation:
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

Extract

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Radiation from a charge accelerated along its path or Linear Acceleration Emission (LAE) involves a number of subtleties (Pauli 1921; Ginzburg 1970, 1989). Potential interest of the mechanism for astrophysics has been pointed out by Wagoner (1969). Melrose (1978) and Rowe (1995) have studied amplified LAE from time-varying electric fields for radio pulsars. In contrast with the latter work our calculations are for static electric field structures or double layers (DLs) as are thought to occur in magnetospheres of neutron stars. In ordinary stellar atmospheres a LAE maser can operate in non-relativistic DLs (Kuijpers 1990) at a frequency ωkDLυ ≈ 2π/ttr, and a wave vector with kDL = 2π/L (L is the DL length, υ is the particle speed, and ttr is the transit time of the DL by the particle). The emission process can be considered as scattering of the electrostatic electric field on fast electrons into electromagnetic radiation satisfying the resonance condition: , when the frequency of the radiated mode in the frame of the emitting electron equals the Doppler shifted frequency of the electric field of the DL (DL wave frequency ωDL ≈ 0). For relativistic DLs, as are applicable to pulsar magnetospheres, the emission is expected to be beamed under an angle θγ−1 and the frequency of emission boosted (ωkDLυ(1 − υcosθ/c)−1γ2kDLυ).

Type
Part 3 Radio Emission Processes
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1996

References

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