Radio Pulses through a Magnetized Relativistic Pair Plasma Flow

Details Radio Pulses through a Magnetized Relativistic Pair Plasma Flow Radio Pulses through a Magnetized Relativistic Pair Plasma Flow

Jun 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002apj...572l..91l&link_type=abstract

The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 572, Issue 1, pp. L91-L94.

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

4

Magnetohydrodynamics: Mhd, Polarization, Stars: Pulsars: General, Relativity, Stars: Winds, Outflows, Waves

Scientific paper

Radio pulses emitted from a pulsar magnetosphere travel across the light cylinder and through a magnetized relativistic pulsar wind composed mainly of an electron-positron (e-/+) pair plasma embedded in a spiral magnetic field. Besides the Doppler-shifted cyclotron resonance and wind advections of hybrid oscillations or low-frequency waves, we identify two cutoff frequencies at ωpe and ~(ω2pe+ω2c/ γ2)1/2 for radio waves of two orthogonal polarizations perpendicular and parallel to the projected spin axis in the sky plane, where ωpe is the proper e-/+ pair plasma frequency, ωc is the relativistic Larmor frequency, and γ is the Lorentz factor of e-/+ bulk flow. Radio pulse spectra of most pulsars show low-frequency cutoffs at νcut<~100 MHz. For (ω2pe+ω2c/ γ2)1/2<2πνcut, one may bracket the e-/+ particle loss rate of a pulsar wind. If for some cases, alternative to the wisdom that all such spectral cutoffs are intrinsic to the emission mechanism(s) near a pulsar, the magnetized e-/+ pair plasma of a pulsar wind actually causes the low-frequency cutoffs of radio pulse spectra, then spectral polarization studies of the two different frequency cutoffs can yield ωpe and ωc/γ. Together with the observed rates of pulsar spin and spin-down, one may derive key properties of a pulsar wind, including the e-/+ particle loss rate.

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