Pulsed radiation from neutron star winds

Abstract

The radiation of a pulsar wind is computed assuming that at roughly 10 to 100 light cylinder radii from the star, magnetic energy is dissipated into particle energy. The synchrotron emission of heated particles appears periodic, with, in general, both a pulse and an interpulse. The predicted spacing agrees well with the Crab and Vela pulse profiles.Using parameters appropriate for the Crab pulsar (magnetisation parameter at the light cylinder $\sigma =6\times 10^4$, Lorentz factor $\Gamma =250$) agreement is found with the observed total pulsed luminosity. This suggests that the high-energy pulses from young pulsars originate not in the corotating magnetosphere within the light cylinder (as in all other models) but from the radially directed wind well outside it.

4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Letters

References in corpus (9)

• Reconnection in a striped pulsar wind
• The Generation of Nonthermal Particles in the Relativistic Magnetic Reconnection of Pair Plasmas
• The Vela Pulsar and its Synchrotron Nebula
• The Crab pulsar in the 0.75-30 MeV range as seen by CGRO COMPTEL
• Very-high-energy gamma radiation associated with the unshocked wind of the Crab pulsar
• Vela, its X-ray nebula, and the polarization of pulsar radiation
• Implications of the Optical Observations of Neutron Stars
• Synchrotron Model for the Infrared, Optical and X-Ray Emission of the Crab Pulsar
• Reconnection in pulsar winds

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