The Effects of Inverse Compton Scattering on the Pulsars' Radiation

Extract

Our calculations show that the cross section of the inverse Compton scattering in strong magnetic fields may be larger than that of Thompson scattering by sevaral orders of magnitude in the case of polar cap surface of pulsars. We can also see that when the energy of e^± exceeds a certain value, their energy loss caused by the inverse Compton scattering may be larger than the energy gain from electric field in the inner gap, which implies that the e^± could not be accelerated to γ = 10⁶. Meanwhile, the electrostatic forces acting on the electrons will be balanced by the radiative pressure if temperature T > 10⁸ K.

It is beleived that the surface temperarure for most of pulsars is less than 10⁶ K, in that case the ions of iron can not be emitted from the surface of pulsars. However, the temperarure at the polar cap can be increased to 3×10⁶ through the bombardment of electrons to the polar cap according to R-S model. This quasi-equilibrium state by self-regulating must make the coherent radio emission unstable on the contrary.