The appearance of a radio-pulsar magnetosphere from a vacuum with a strong magnetic field. Accumulation of particles

Abstract

The accumulation of electrons and positrons in the vacuum magnetosphere of a neutron star with a surface magnetic field of B ∼ 1012 G is considered. It is shown that particles created in the magnetosphere or falling into the magnetosphere from outside undergo ultra-relativistic oscillations with a frequency of 10–100 MHz. These oscillations decay due to energy losses to curvature radiation and bremsstrahlung, with their frequencies reaching 1–10 GHz. Simultaneously, the particles undergo regular motion along the force-free surface along closed trajectories. This leads to the gradual accumulation of particles at the force-free surface and the formation of a fully charge-separated plasma layer with a density of the order of the Goldreich-Julian density. The presence of a constant source of electron-positron pairs in the magnetosphere due to the absorption of energetic cosmic gamma-rays leads to the growth of this layer, bringing about a rapid filling of the pulsar magnetosphere with electron-positron plasma if the paircreation multiplication coefficient is sufficiently high.