Kinetic Model of Large-amplitude Oscillations in Neutron Star Pair Cascades

Fábio Cruz; Thomas Grismayer; Luis Oliveira e Silva

Key information

Authors:

Fábio Cruz (Fábio Alexandre Lopes Cruz); Thomas Grismayer (Thomas Emmanuel Aurelien Grismayer); Luis Oliveira e Silva (Luís Miguel De Oliveira e Silva)

Published in

February 19, 2021

Abstract

Electron–positron pair cascades developed in the extreme electromagnetic fields of neutron star polar caps are considered a key source of magnetospheric plasma in these objects. We use a simplified model that maps the quantum electrodynamics processes governing pair cascades to analytically and numerically model these cascades, and show that large-amplitude oscillations of the electric field are inductively driven by the resulting plasma. A plasma instability arises in these oscillations, and particles accelerated in growing electric field perturbations can drive secondary pair bursts that damp the large-amplitude oscillations. An analytical model is proposed to describe this interplay between the pair production and kinetic collective plasma processes. All analytical results are shown to be in excellent agreement with particle-in-cell simulations.