Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 815, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/815/2/L19
Keywords
acceleration of particles; magnetic fields; plasmas; pulsars: general
Categories
Funding
- NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program [NNX15AT50H]
- NASA [NNX14AQ67G, NNX15AM30G, NAS8-03060]
- Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship - Chandra X-ray Center [PF3-140115]
- Simons Foundation
- NASA [NNX14AQ67G, 674268, NNX15AT50H, 801689, NNX15AM30G, 798652] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Physics [1144374, 1523261] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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It has recently been demonstrated that self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations of low-obliquity pulsar magnetospheres in flat spacetime show weak particle acceleration and no pair production near the poles. We investigate the validity of this conclusion in a more realistic spacetime geometry via general-relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of the aligned pulsar magnetosphere with pair formation. We find that the addition of the frame-dragging effect makes the local current density along the magnetic field larger than the Goldreich-Julian value, which leads to unscreened parallel electric fields and the ignition of a pair cascade. When pair production is active, we observe field oscillations in the open field bundle, which could be related to pulsar radio emission. We conclude that general-relativistic effects are essential for the existence of the pulsar mechanism in low-obliquity rotators.
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