On the surface extraction of electrons in a pulsar

Abstract

We present a novel description of how energetic electrons may be ejected from the pulsar interior into the atmosphere, based on the collective electrostatic oscillations of interior electrons confined to move parallel to the magnetic field. The size of the interior magnetic field influences the interior plasma frequency, via the associated matter density compression. The plasma oscillations occur close to the regions of maximum magnetic field curvature, that is, close to the magnetic poles where the majority of magnetic flux emerges. Given that these oscillations have a density-dependent maximum amplitude before wave-breaking occurs, such waves can eject energetic electrons using only the self-field of the electron population in the interior. Moreover, photons emitted by electrons in the bulk of the oscillation can escape along the field lines by virtue of the lower opacity there (and the fact that they are emitted predominantly in this direction), leading to features in the spectra of pulsars.

8 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (7)

• Physics of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars
• The Magnificent Seven: Magnetic fields and surface temperature distributions
• Magneto--thermal evolution of neutron stars
• Chandra X-Ray Observations of Nineteen Millisecond Pulsars in the Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae
• Atmosphere Models of Magnetized Neutron Stars: QED Effects, Radiation Spectra, and Polarization Signals
• Cooling of Neutron Stars with Strong Toroidal Magnetic Fields
• UV emission from young and middle-aged pulsars: Connecting X-rays with the optical

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Axionic suppression of plasma wakefield acceleration
• Relativistic Correction of the Field Emission Current in the Fowler-Nordheim Formalism
• Non-perturbative aspects of particle acceleration in non-linear electrodynamics