Observational consequences of the Partially Screened Gap

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the magnetic field structure and gap breakdown mechanisms in pulsars influence their thermal X-ray emission, proposing the Partially Screened Gap model and linking it to observable phenomena like mode-changing and pulse nulling.

Contribution

It introduces the PSG model considering different gap breakdown mechanisms and correlates surface magnetic fields with X-ray emission properties, explaining pulsar mode-changing behaviors.

Findings

Surface magnetic fields estimated around 10^14 G.

Gap breakdown caused by CR or ICS, affecting plasma density.

Different breakdown scenarios explain mode-changing and nulling phenomena.

Abstract

Observations of the thermal X-ray emission from old radio pulsars implicate that the size of hot spots is much smaller then the size of the polar cap that follows from the purely dipolar geometry of pulsar magnetic field. Plausible explanation of this phenomena is an assumption that the magnetic field at the stellar surface differs essentially from the purely dipolar field. Using the conservation of the magnetic flux through the area bounded by open magnetic field lines we can estimate the surface magnetic field as of the order of $10^{14}$G. Based on observations that the hot spot temperature is about a few million Kelvins the Partially Screened Gap (PSG) model was proposed which assumes that the temperature of the actual polar cap equals to the so called critical temperature. We discuss correlation between the temperature and corresponding area of the thermal X-ray emission for a number of pulsars. We have found that depending on the conditions in a polar cap region the gap breakdown can be caused either by the Curvature Radiation (CR) or by the Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS). When the gap is dominated by ICS the density of secondary plasma with Lorentz factors $10^{2}-10^{3}$ is at least an order of magnitude higher then in a CR scenario. We believe that two different gap breakdown scenarios can explain the mode-changing phenomenon and in particular the pulse nulling. Measurements of the characteristic spacing between sub-pulses ($P_{2}$) and the period at which a pattern of pulses crosses the pulse window ($P_{3}$) allowed us to determine more strict conditions for avalanche pair production in the PSG.