ACP Seminar (Astronomy - Cosmology - Particle Physics)

Speaker: Kouichi Hirotani (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan)
Title: Pulsars: excellent systems for testing particle acceleration theories
Date (JST): Mon, Mar 16, 2009, 15:30 - 17:00
Place: Seminar Room at IPMU Prefab. B
Related File: 14.pdf
Abstract: The study of emission from rotation-powered pulsars is undergoing a major
advance with the successful launch of the two gamma-ray space telescopes,
AGILE and Fermi.
Theoretical attempts to explain these high-energy emissions have
concentrated on two scenarios: The slot-gap (SG) model, an extension of the
conventional polar-cap model into the higher altitudes, and the outer-gap
(OG) model in which the gap is located typically a few hundred neutron-star
radii away from the star. In this talk, I will solve the electrodynamics of
particle accelerators from the first principles for the first time and
demonstrate that
(1) the SG does not exist as a solution of the basic equations,
(2) the SG model cannot reproduce observations even if it exists,
(3) the obtained solution corresponds to a quantitative extension of the
traditional OG models and reproduces the observations.