Abstract
The process in which synchrotron gamma rays produce electron-positron pairs when emitted in a neutron star's magnetosphere is examined for a gamma-ray burst model of global magnetospheric emission. Spectra produced by the model are steeper at high energies than unattenuated spectra. A break in the spectra occurs at the cyclotron frequency of the surface field. Immediate pair creation produces a weak continuum feature at 20 keV and a strong discontinuity at 1 MeV. Photons that propagate from low-field regions to high-field regions produce a broad spectral feature centered at 20 keV in hard gamma-ray spectra. The synchrotron cooled pairs form a shell around the neutron star which is characterized by two regimes. In one regime, the shell is optically thick to Compton scattering and the pairs annihilate in the shell. In the other regime, the shell is optically thin to Compton scattering and pairs flow to the neutron star surface before annihilating.
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