date: 2009 Mar. 11(Wed) 13:30 - 14:30
room: Kobe University, Shizen Bldg. #3, room 508,
speaker: Dr. Koichi Hirotani (Theoretical Institute for Advanced Researches in Astrophysics)
title: Pulsars: excellent systems for testing particle acceleration theories
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.