State-switching Mechanism of Intermittent Pulsars

Abstract

Abstract The emission feature of intermittent pulsars is significant for understanding the pulsar emission mechanism. Using the observational evidence of radio emissions turning on and off and the corresponding spin-down rates in these two states of an intermittent pulsar, we will examine the polar-cap potential drop, gap height, and curvature radii of a few intermittent pulsars within the regime of the pulsar polar-cap emission theory by applying the current loss and energy flux of particle flow to pulsar braking, which are generally associated with radio emission from the polar cap. It is seen that the polar-cap parameters of the intermittent pulsars are almost equal to their maximum values, which is the main prediction of the pulsar polar-cap theory with respect to the breaking of the radio emission. It is also noticed that the intermittent pulsars are distributed near the dipole death line in the diagram, which is consistent with their emission features and the calculated polar-cap parameters. To further confirm the state switching of the intermittent pulsar, the relationships among spin-down rate, gap height, potential drop, and activity duty cycles of PSR B1931+24 are discussed. It is found that the gap height has an anticorrelation with the activity duty cycle, which indicates that the intermittency of the radio emission has a close connection to the gap height, as indicated by the pulsar polar-cap emission theory.