On the fraction of particles involved in magneto-centrifugally generated ultra-high energy electrons in the Crab pulsar

Abstract

The earthward journey of ultra high energy electrons (∼600TeV) produced in the Pulsar atmosphere by Landau damping of magneto-centrifugally excited Langmuir waves (drawing energy form the rotational slowdown) on primary electrons, is charted. It is shown, that just as they escape the light cylinder zone, the ultra-high energy particles, interacting with the medium of the Crab nebula, rapidly loose their energy via the quantum synchrotron process, producing highly energetic gamma rays ∼0.6 PeV. Interacting with the cosmic background radiation in the interstellar medium, only a tiny fraction of these ultra high energy photons (via the γγ channel) are, then transformed into electron–positron pairs. Detected flux of these photons imposes an upper limit on the fraction (4×10−7) of the magnetospheric particles involved in the process of generation of ultra-high energy photons (up to 600TeV).