No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Radio emission from polar caps in pulsars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Extract
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 ω ≈ kDLυ ≈ 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 θ ≈ γ−1 and the frequency of emission boosted (ω ≈ kDLυ(1 − υcosθ/c)−1 ≈ γ2kDLυ).
- Type
- Part 3 Radio Emission Processes
- Information
- International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 160: Pulsars: Problems and Progress , 1996 , pp. 181 - 182
- Copyright
- Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1996