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Comparing Gamma-ray Loud and Gamma-ray Quiet Radio Pulsars – A Unification Scheme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2018

Patrick Weltevrede*
Affiliation:
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester Alan Turing Building, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom email: Patrick.Weltevrede@manchester.ac.uk
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Abstract

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A radio polarization study of gamma-ray-detected pulsars reveals a surprising tendency for the magnetic and rotation axes to be relatively aligned. This provides tension with gamma-ray models, which disfavour such alignment. The lack of correlation between these findings and those derived from the gamma-ray light curves suggests problems in the models. To make the data consistent with a random orientation of the magnetic field the emission regions could be assumed to extend outside what is traditionally thought to be the open-field-line region in a magnetic inclination angle dependent way. Both acceptance and rejection of this hypothesis has important consequences. Finally, a unification scheme is proposed to explain the observational differences between gamma-ray loud and gamma-ray quiet radio pulsars. This unification scheme takes the orientation of the line of sight and the magnetic inclination angle to be key parameters affecting both the radio and gamma-ray light-curve morphology.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2018 

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