Non-thermal emissions from outer magnetospheric accelerator of pulsars

Abstract

We study non-thermal emission process in pulsar magnetospheric accelerator (outer gap). We discuss emission process in optical through γ-ray bands. We solve the dynamics in the outer gap in the magnetic meridional plane, which includes the rotation and magnetic axes. We calculate the spectrum of the curvature and synchrotron processes. Using a threedimensional geometrical model, we compute pulse profile and polarization characteristics. We compare the model results with the observations of the Vela pulsar and the Crab pulsar. We demonstrate that the observed multi-peak structure of the pulse profile observed by RXTE can be reproduced by the present study with the outward and inward emissions from the outer gap accelerator. The calculated polarization characteristics are in general consistent with the Crab optical data. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.