Modified surface redshift of pulsars and magnetars by magnetized plasmas and vacuum polarization

TL;DR

This paper investigates how magnetized plasmas and vacuum polarization in pulsars and magnetars alter their observed spectral redshifts, revealing effects comparable to gravitational redshift and dependent on wave modes and radiation frequency.

Contribution

It introduces a framework to quantify the influence of plasma and vacuum polarization effects on spectral redshifts in pulsars and magnetars, highlighting anisotropic and mode-dependent modifications.

Findings

Redshift modifications can match gravitational redshift magnitude.

Redshift effects are anisotropic and mode-dependent.

Vacuum polarization significantly affects X-ray redshifts in magnetars.

Abstract

The propagation of emissions in the relativistic streaming pair plasmas of pulsars and magnetars is studied within the framework of Gordon effective metric theory, and the effect of vacuum polarization on the radiation spectra is examined particularly. It is found that the electromagnetic and kinetic effects of streaming magnetized plasmas and the vacuum polarization effect can shift the radiation spectra of stars. The modification of redshifts of spectra can reach the same magnitude as the gravitational redshift in particular cases. Moreover, the redshifts induced by the media are anisotropic and associated with wave modes. For the O-mode, the modification of redshifts is dependent on the frequency of the radiation. For lower-frequency radiation, the modification is dominated by the plasma effect, while for higher-frequency radiations, by the vacuum polarization effect. For the X-mode, the modification is non-dispersive and dominated by the vacuum polarization effect. The vacuum polarization also has a significant effect on the redshifts of X-ray emissions in magnetars.