The non-aligned pulsar magnetosphere - an illustrative model for small obliquity
Abstract
The electromagnetic field outside a pulsar of small obliquity is approximated by Goldreich-Julian conditions out to the light cylinder and by an outgoing vacuum wave beyond the cylinder, matched by the appropriate surface charge-current distribution. The energy supply for the wave requires current flow between the pulsar and the light cylinder. The cold electrons carrying the current achieve relativistic energies near the light cylinder; the consequent inertial and radiation damping forces enable the electrons to drift across the field lines and so complete their circuits back to the pulsar. It is suggested that low-obliquity pulsars are essentially emitters of a plasma-modified low-frequency wave and of gamma radiation near the light cylinder. Illustrative models are constructed as perturbations about an analogous approximate model for the aligned case.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- February 1982
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/198.2.405
- Bibcode:
- 1982MNRAS.198..405M
- Keywords:
-
- Current Distribution;
- Electromagnetic Fields;
- Perturbation Theory;
- Pulsar Magnetospheres;
- Pulsars;
- Stellar Models;
- Cold Plasmas;
- Gamma Rays;
- Magnetohydrodynamic Waves;
- Polarization (Charge Separation);
- Relativistic Electron Beams;
- Astrophysics