Radio Emission by Soliton Formation in Relativistically Hot Streaming Pulsar Pair Plasmas

Abstract

A number of possible pulsar radio emission mechanisms are based on streaming instabilities in relativistically hot electron-positron pair plasmas. At saturation the unstable waves can form, in principle, stable solitary waves which could emit the observed intense radio signals. We searched for the proper plasma parameters which would lead to the formation of solitons, investigated their properties and dynamics as well as the resulting oscillations of electrons and positrons possibly leading to radio wave emission. We utilized a one-dimensional version of the relativistic Particle-in-Cell code ACRONYM initialized with an appropriately parameterized one-dimensional Maxwell-Jüttner velocity space particle distribution to study the evolution of the resulting streaming instability in a pulsar pair plasma. We found that strong electrostatic superluminal L-mode solitons are formed for plasmas with normalized inverse temperatures $\rho \ge 1.66$ or relative beam drift speeds with Lorentz factors $\gamma >40$. The parameters of the solitons fulfill the wave emission conditions. For appropriate pulsar parameters the resulting energy densities of superluminal solitons can reach up to $1.1\times 10^5$ erg$\cdot$cm${}^{-3}$, while those of subluminal solitons reach only up to $1.2\times 10^4$ erg$\cdot$cm${}^{-3}$. Estimated energy densities of up to $7\times 10^{12}$ erg$\cdot$cm${}^{-3}$ suffice to explain pulsar nanoshots.

20 pages, 15 figures, 1 table

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• Particle-in-cell simulations of electron-positron cyclotron maser forming pulsar radio zebras
• Streaming instability in neutron star magnetospheres: No indication of soliton-like waves
• Origin of radio polarization in pulsar polar caps
• Model of pulsar pair cascades in non uniform electric fields: growth rate, density profile and screening time
• Bunch Expansion as a cause for Pulsar Radio Emissions