Are Crab nanoshots Schwinger sparks?

Journal Article · Thu May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2015

OSTI ID:1212728

Stebbins, Albert ^[1]; Yoo, Hojin ^[2]

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1. Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
2. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

The highest brightness temperature ever observed are from "nanoshots" from the Crab pulsar which we argue could be the signature of bursts of vacuum e^± pair production. If so this would be the first time the astronomical Schwinger effect has been observed. These "Schwinger sparks" would be an intermittent but extremely powerful, ~10³ L_⊙, 10 PeV e^± accelerator in the heart of the Crab. These nanosecond duration sparks are generated in a volume less than 1 m³ and the existence of such sparks has implications for the small scale structure of the magnetic field of young pulsars such as the Crab. As a result, this mechanism may also play a role in producing other enigmatic bright short radio transients such as fast radio bursts.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1212728
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB-15-236-A; arXiv eprint number arXiv:1505.06400
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English