Energy accumulation mechanism in pulsar magnetospheric plasma eigen-waves and formation of Giant Radio Pulses

Abstract

In the present work we consider energy accumulation mechanism in relativistic electron-positron plasma in the magnetosphere of pulsars. Waves propagating almost across the magnetic field lines are generated that accumulate the energy of plasma particles, as the waves stay significantly long in the resonance region. The accumulated energy is transmitted in the parallel direction of the magnetic field lines as soon as the non-linear plasma processes start to operate. It is suggested that exit of the accumulated energy via waves propagating along the magnetic field lines matching the viewing angle of the observer produces giant pulses. It is shown that these waves come in the radio domain, explaining the Giant Radio Pulse phenomenon.

Giant pulses from J1823-3021A observed with the MeerKAT telescope

“…A number of theoretical model of GPs require sudden release of accumulated energy (Istomin 2004;Lyutikov 2007;Machabeli et al 2019). This is at odds with the observational evidence, that suggests that the GPs occur independently from one another even within the same rotation and that there is no correlation between peak flux and wait times between the GPs.…”

“…There are different theories explaining the mechanism behind the generation of GPs in pulsars. Some models predict that the emission arises near the light cylinder of the pulsar and is caused by perturbations in the electron-positron plasma (Istomin 2004;Lyutikov 2007;Machabeli et al 2019). In these models, GPs are discharge events in which the energy accumulated in the plasma is released in the form of radio waves.…”

Kinematics of Crab Giant Pulses

“…Taking our model results at face value, our inference of highly relativistic (but relatively cold) motion provides a strong constraint on the emission mechanism, since for different models, vastly different values and distributions of γ are expected, ranging anywhere from γ ∼ 1 to γ ∼ 10 7 (e.g., Istomin 2004;Petrova 2004;Lyutikov 2007;Lyubarsky 2019;Machabeli et al 2019;Philippov et al 2019;Lyutikov 2021). A model that seems to match particularly well is the one recently proposed by Lyutikov (2021), in which the giant pulses are produced by pair plasma blobs created in reconnection events outside of the light cylinder, moving relativistically through ambient magnetic structures.…”

“…Giant pulses likely originate near the pulsar's light cylinder, where corotating plasma approaches the speed of light ), but it is not yet clear what physical mechanism is responsible. Indeed, as a result, theoretical estimates of the Lorentz factor γ range from ∼1 to ∼10 7 (e.g., Istomin 2004;Petrova 2004;Lyutikov 2007;Lyubarsky 2019;Machabeli et al 2019;Philippov et al 2019;Lyutikov 2021).…”

Low-frequency observations of giant pulses from ordinary pulsars

“…Well-known representatives of the former group are Crab pulsar [1] and millisecond pulsar B1937+21 [2]. There are a lot of theoretical models, concerning GRPs from bright, fast-rotating pulsars of the first group [15][16][17][18] but much less is known about pulses from the ordinary pulsars with GRPs. Still, we consider that studies of GRPs from the second period pulsars are equally important for the full understanding of pulse generation mechanism.…”