The mechanism of coherent radio emission in some classes of pulsar

TL;DR

This paper investigates the mechanism behind coherent radio emission in pulsars, analyzing data from 29 pulsars to determine the plasma source responsible for their radio spectra, concluding that ion-proton plasma is the most consistent source.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of pulsar radio luminosities and identifies ion-proton plasma as the likely source of their coherent radio emission.

Findings

Pulsars are highly efficient radio emitters below 10 GHz.

The distribution of energy per charge varies over two orders of magnitude.

Ion-proton plasma source aligns with observed pulsar spectra.

Abstract

Radio luminosities have been estimated from published data for a well-defined homogeneous set of 29 normal pulsars. The radio-frequency energies per unit charge in the primary accelerated particle beam are given for each pulsar and form a distribution more than two orders of magnitude in width. The values found show that pulsars are extremely efficient generators of radiation below 1 - 10 GHz given the kinematic constraints which are obtained here in the cases of electron-positron and ion-proton plasmas. Our conclusion is that only the ion-proton plasma source is consistent with the spectra of normal and millisecond pulsars and we list and describe the factors which together support this conclusion.