High energy emission from young pulsars

Abstract

We introduce a three-dimensional accelerator model to explain the high energy radiation from young pulsars. We show that the accelerators of pulsars will exist in the outer magnetosphere. Their inner boundary of the accelerator can reach about 10 stellar radii and the outer boundary is located at the light cylinder. We use this outermagnetospheric accelerator model to calculate the phase-resolved radiation spectrum and the polarization of the Crab pulsar. We find that the observed radiation come from three components, i.e. the radiation from outward current beyond the null surface to the light cylinder and the radiations from both the inward and outward current between the inner boundary and the null charge surface. High energy photons propagate near the neutron star will be absorbed by the stellar magnetic field. Our model results are roughly consistent with the 360 degree phase-resolved data from 10KeV to 10 GeV energy range. We also predict that there is an additional component in 30 GeV, which are the survival primary curvature photons, and they should be detectable by GLAST.