Acceleration Potential and Density Profile of Secondary Plasma in the Magnetosphere of Orthogonal Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to determine the accelerating potential and plasma density profiles in the magnetosphere of orthogonal pulsars, accounting for arbitrary magnetic inclination angles.

Contribution

It presents a self-consistent approach based on vacuum gap concepts and Poisson equation solutions to analyze pulsar magnetospheres with arbitrary inclination.

Findings

The method allows calculation of accelerating potential above pulsar polar caps.

It determines transverse plasma density profiles in the magnetosphere.

Inverse Compton scattering has negligible effect on the processes studied.

Abstract

A new method for determining the accelerating potential above the polar caps of radio pulsars with an arbitrary inclination angle of the magnetic axis to the rotation axis has been proposed. The approach has been based on the concept of a vacuum gap, the height and shape of the upper boundary of which are found self-consistently together with the solution of the corresponding Poisson equation. In turn, information about the accelerating potential has made it possible to determine the transverse profiles of the secondary plasma density. It has also been shown that the effect of inverse Compton scattering on the considered processes is insignificant.