The Net Advance of Physics: Gamma-Ray Pulsar Emission Models, by Alice K. Harding -- Section 1.
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As the number of -ray pulsars has grown from two to eight over the
five years since the launch of CGRO, the amount of new data on these objects
has provided many puzzles, some clues, but few definitive answers.
Rather, the models for -ray pulsars that were proposed and
investigated in the pre-CGRO era have been evolving in light of the new
results. There are currently two types of -ray pulsar models being
studied in detail. Polar cap models assume that particles are accelerated
along open field lines near the neutron star by parallel electric fields and
induce pair cascades by either curvature radiation (Daugherty & Harding 1982,
Usov & Melrose 1995)
or inverse-Compton radiation (Dermer & Sturner 1994). Outer gap models
assume that primary particles are accelerated in vacuum gaps in the
outer magnetosphere and induce pair cascades through - pair
production (Cheng, Ho & Ruderman 1986; Romani & Yadigaroglu 1995).
In addition, there are ideas for generating pulsed -ray emission
at the light cylinder (Lyubarski 1996) or in vacuum fields in the
magnetosphere (Higgins & Henriksen 1996). With the larger number of
observed -ray pulsars and the improved sensitivity of the detectors,
predictions of the models can now be tested and their parameters more
tightly constrained.
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Introduction
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