The Energy-dependent Gamma-Ray Light Curves and Spectra of the Vela Pulsar in the Dissipative Magnetospheres

Abstract

We study the pulsar energy-dependent γ -ray light curves and spectra from curvature radiation in the dissipative magnetospheres. The dissipative magnetospheres with the combined force-free (FFE) and Aristotelian are computed by a pseudo-spectral method with a high-resolution simulation in the rotating coordinate system, which produces a near-FFE field structure with the dissipative region only near the equatorial current sheet outside the light cylinder. We use the test-particle trajectory method to compute the energy-dependent γ -ray light curves and phase-average and phase-resolved spectra by including both the accelerating electric field and radiation reaction. The predicted energy-dependent γ -ray light curves and spectra are then compared with those of the Vela pulsar observed by Fermi. Our results can generally reproduce the observed trends of the energy-dependent γ -ray light curves and spectra for the Vela pulsar.

Keywords

• Pulsars
• Magnetic fields
• Gamma-rays