On the electric field screening by electron-positron pairs in a pulsar magnetosphere

Details On the electric field screening by electron-positron pairs in a pulsar magnetosphere On the electric field screening by electron-positron pairs in a pulsar magnetosphere

Apr 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998mnras.295l..53s&link_type=abstract

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 295, Issue 4, pp. L53-L58.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

35

Magnetic Fields, Plasmas, Pulsars: General, Gamma-Rays: Theory

Scientific paper

We present a steady one-dimensional model for a pulsar polar cap accelerator, where the field-aligned electric field and flow are solved self-consistently with a given current density. It is assumed that no particles return to the star. It is known that the space-charge-limited flow is accelerated to energies high enough to create electron-positron pairs if the assumed current density is high enough. We find that when pairs are created in such a space-charge-limited flow, the accelerating electric field is screened out within a short distance after pair creation, if the pair particle flux is larger than a critical value. We also find that a space charge density wave is excited in the screening region. We find that a pair flux larger than the critical value M_c=10^3-10^5 must be reached in a layer with thickness equal to the braking distance for the decelerating component. Therefore, the required multiplicity - the number of pairs created by one primary particle - is too large to be realized in the actual pulsar magnetosphere. We suggest that in order to obtain a localized potential drop along the polar cap magnetic flux, one needs to take into account additional effects such as wave-particle interaction or quasi-periodic pair creation.

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