High-Energy Emission from Pulsars: The Polar Cap Scenario

Abstract

The study of pulsars in the three and a half decades since their discovery has highlighted a handful of issues critical to their understanding. To date there is no consensus on the physical mechanism for their radio radio emission, despite a rapid increase in the observed population due to the Parkes Multi-Beam survey and prospects for similar growth in the radio population database in the near future. The small subset of pulsars that emit at X-ray to gamma-ray wavelengths are critical to refining the pulsar paradigm since this energy band (i) is where the vast majority of radiative luminosity is observed, and (ii) is intimately connected to the pair winds that form the dominant mode of energy deposition in the circum-pulsar environment. The most crucial point of contention pertaining to the high energy astrophysics of pulsars is the location of the acceleration region in their magnetospheres: is an outer gap model or a polar cap scenario (or both) the most appropriate picture. Radiative signatures provide the clues to this current enigma. This review focuses on salient characteristics of the polar cap scenario; these form the basis for discriminating observational diagnostics that should drive pulsars studies in the GLAST era just three years away.

11 pages, 2 embedded figures, invited review for the COSPAR Symposium E1.4 "High Energy Studies of Supernova Remnants and Neutron Stars" held in Houston, TX 2002, Adv. Space Res., in press

References in corpus (7)

• Extended Acceleration in Slot Gaps and Pulsar High-Energy Emission
• Chandra Study of a Complete Sample of Millisecond Pulsars in 47Tuc and NGC6397
• Regimes of Pulsar Pair Formation and Particle Energetics
• NE2001. II. Using Radio Propagation Data to Construct a Model for the Galactic Distribution of Free Electrons
• The State of pulsar theory
• Rotation as a source of asymmetry in the double-peak lightcurves of the bright EGRET pulsars
• High-Energy Radiation from Pulsars : A Three Dimensional Model Approach

Cited by in corpus (34)

• The H.E.S.S. survey of the Inner Galaxy in very high-energy gamma-rays
• The First Fermi Large Area Telescope Catalog of Gamma-ray Pulsars
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations of the Crab Pulsar and Nebula
• The surprising Crab pulsar and its nebula: A review
• Spectral properties of 441 radio pulsars
• Observation of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 25 GeV from the Crab Pulsar with MAGIC
• Detection of Pulsed Gamma Rays Above 100 GeV from the Crab Pulsar
• Fermi LAT Observations of the Vela Pulsar
• The Vela Pulsar: Results from the First Year of Fermi LAT Observations
• Detection of the energetic pulsar PSR B1509-58 and its pulsar wind nebula in MSH 15-52 using the Fermi-Large Area Telescope
• A Cosmic Ray Positron Anisotropy due to Two Middle-Aged, Nearby Pulsars?
• Gamma-ray Pulsar Revolution
• Observations of the Crab pulsar between 25 GeV and 100 GeV with the MAGIC I telescope
• Fermi LAT observations of the Geminga pulsar
• Fermi LAT detection of pulsed gamma-rays from the Vela-like pulsars PSR J1048-5832 and PSR J2229+6114
• Discovery of Pulsed Gamma Rays from the Young Radio Pulsar PSR J1028-5819 with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• On the origin of correlated X-ray/VHE emission from LS I +61 303
• Fermi Large Area Telescope Observations of Gamma-ray Pulsars PSR J1057-5226, J1709-4429, and J1952+3252
• Observations of Energetic High Magnetic Field Pulsars with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Inverse Compton model of pulsar high energy emission
• Constraints on the steady and pulsed very high energy gamma-ray emission from observations of PSR B1951+32/CTB 80 with the MAGIC Telescope
• Death Line of Gamma-ray Pulsars with Outer Gaps
• High energy gamma-ray emission from compact galactic sources in the context of observations with the next generation Cherenkov Telescope Arrays
• Galactic and Extragalactic Sources of Very High Energy Gamma-rays
• A self-consistent model of cosmic-ray fluxes and positron excess: Roles of nearby pulsars and a sub-dominant source population
• Radio and Gamma-Ray Constraints on the Emission Geometry and Birthplace of PSR J2043+2740
• Lower bounds of altitudes for pulsar $\gamma$-ray radiation
• Study of the High Energy Gamma-ray Emission from the Crab Pulsar with the MAGIC telescope and Fermi-LAT
• Pulsars in Gamma Rays: What Fermi Is Teaching Us
• Signatures of Pulsar Polar-Cap Emission at the High-Energy Spectral Cut-off
• AMICA, an astro-mapper for AMS
• The Major Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes (MAGIC)
• First Detection of the Crab Pulsar above 100 GeV
• First Detection of a Pulsar above 100 GeV