Does a strong particle accelerator arise very close to the light cylinder in a pulsar magnetosphere?

Abstract

We examine if an efficient particle acceleration takes place by a magnetic-field-aligned electric field near the light cylinder in a rotating neutron star magnetosphere. Constructing the electric current density with the actual motion of collision-less plasmas, we express the rotationally induced, Goldreich-Julian charge density as a function of position. It is demonstrated that the 'light cylinder gap', which emits very high energy photons via curvature process by virtue of a strong magnetic-field-aligned electric field very close to the light cylinder, will not arise in an actual pulsar magnetosphere.

3 pages, 1 figure; Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society Letters in press

References in corpus (2)

• Observation of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 25 GeV from the Crab Pulsar with MAGIC
• High-energy Emission from Pulsar Magnetospheres

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Theory of pulsar magnetosphere and wind
• White Paper and Roadmap for Quantum Gravity Phenomenology in the Multi-Messenger Era
• Three-dimensional non-vacuum pulsar outer-gap model: Localized acceleration electric field in the higher altitudes
• Magnetocentrifugal acceleration of bulk motion of plasma in pulsar magnetosphere
• Pulsed VHE emission from the Crab Pulsar in the context of magnetocentrifugal particle acceleration