Abstract

We consider the influence of a non-dipolar magnetic field on the gamma-ray emission from the polar regions of a radio pulsar. The pulsar is treated in a Goldreich-Julian model with a free flow of charge from the surface of the neutron star. When finding the intensity of the gamma-ray radiation of the pulsar tube, both curvature gamma-ray radiation from the primary electrons and non-resonance inverse Compton scattering of thermal photons from the polar cap on primary electrons are taken into account. When finding the height of the upper plate of the pulsar diode, we included only positrons created by the curvature radiation of primary electrons. We assumed that the polar cap is heated by the return positron current. The influence on the gamma-ray emission of variations in both the radius of curvature of the magnetic force lines and in the electric field due to the non-dipolarity of the magnetic field were taken into account. The presence of even weak non-dipolarity of the magnetic field leads to a sharp decrease in the intensity of the gamma-ray emission from the pulsar tube at energies 1–100 MeV, while the intensity of the inverse Compton radiation (at energies 1–100 GeV) varies only relatively weakly.

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