Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998aas...193.2905h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, 193rd AAS Meeting, #29.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1288
Physics
Scientific paper
Growing evidence for the existence of magnetars, neutron stars with ultra-strong magnetic fields above 10(13) Gauss, has sparked interest in exploring the physics of this new type of star. It was suggested (Baring & Harding 1998, ApJ, 507) that high-field pulsars and magnetars should be radio-quiet, because photon splitting, in which gamma-ray photons split into two lower energy photons, competes with and suppresses pair creation. The creation of electron-positron pairs in electromagnetic cascades is copious in pulsars with fields below 10(13) Gauss, and is believed to be an essential requirement for coherent radio emission. We have modeled pair cascades in pulsars with ultra-strong fields via a Monte Carlo simulation that includes photon splitting, pair production and synchrotron radiation of created pairs. The calculation produces pair yields and output photon spectra from cascades as a function of surface magnetic field strength. We find that pair yields decrease at high field strengths, not only because of competition between pair creation and photon splitting, but because pairs are created near threshold in very low Landau states, suppressing synchrotron emission. The suppression of synchrotron emission of created pairs decreases the cascade generations and dramatically lowers the pair yields. We will discuss the importance of these results for radio-quiescence of high-field pulsars and for the high energy observability of magnetars.
Baring Matthew G.
Gonthier Peter L.
Harding Alice K.
Knecht Marc
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