Millisecond newly born pulsars as efficient accelerators of electrons

TL;DR

This paper proposes that newly born millisecond pulsars can efficiently accelerate electrons to ultra-high energies through a mechanism involving Landau damping of Langmuir waves driven by centrifugal instabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel acceleration mechanism for electrons in millisecond pulsars via Landau damping of electrostatic waves, highlighting its efficiency and potential to reach 10^{18} eV.

Findings

Electrons can reach energies of about 10^{18} eV.

Energy transfer from pulsar rotation to electrons is highly efficient.

The mechanism is not significantly affected by energy losses.

Abstract

The newly born millisecond pulsars are investigated as possible energy sources for creating ultra-high energy electrons. The transfer of energy from the star rotation to high energy electrons takes place through the Landau damping of centrifugally driven (via a two stream instability) electrostatic Langmuir waves. Generated in the bulk magnetosphere plasma, such waves grow to high amplitudes, and then damp, very effectively, on relativistic electrons driving them to even higher energies. We show that the rate of transfer of energy is so efficient that no energy losses might affect the mechanism of particle acceleration; the electrons might achieve energies of the order of 10^{18}eV for parameters characteristic of a young star.