A Novel Mechanism of Pair Creation in Pulsar Magnetospheres

Abstract

In this paper we study the possibility of efficient pair production in a pulsar’s magnetosphere. It has been shown that by means of relativistic centrifugal force the electrostatic field exponentially amplifies. As a result the field approaches the Schwinger limit leading to a pair creation process in the light cylinder area where the effects of rotation are very efficient. Analysing the parameters of the normal period (∼1 s) pulsars we found that the process is so efficient that the number density of electron–positron pairs exceeds the Goldreich–Julian density by five orders of magnitude.