COOLING RATES FOR RELATIVISTIC ELECTRONS UNDERGOING COMPTON SCATTERING IN STRONG MAGNETIC FIELDS
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, MS 108, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251 (United States)
For inner magnetospheric models of hard X-ray and gamma-ray emission in high-field pulsars and magnetars, resonant Compton upscattering is anticipated to be the most efficient process for generating continuum radiation. This is in part due to the proximity of a hot soft photon bath from the stellar surface to putative radiation dissipation regions in the inner magnetosphere. Moreover, because the scattering process becomes resonant at the cyclotron frequency, the effective cross section exceeds the classical Thomson value by over two orders of magnitude, thereby enhancing the efficiency of continuum production and the cooling of relativistic electrons. This paper presents computations of the electron cooling rates for this process, which are needed for resonant Compton models of non-thermal radiation from such highly magnetized pulsars. The computed rates extend previous calculations of magnetic Thomson cooling to the domain of relativistic quantum effects, sampled near and above the quantum critical magnetic field of 44.13 TG. This is the first exposition of fully relativistic, quantum magnetic Compton cooling rates for electrons, and it employs both the traditional Johnson and Lippmann cross section and a newer Sokolov and Ternov (ST) formulation of Compton scattering in strong magnetic fields. Such ST formalism is formally correct for treating spin-dependent effects that are important in the cyclotron resonance and has not been addressed before in the context of cooling by Compton scattering. The QED effects are observed to profoundly lower the rates below extrapolations of the familiar magnetic Thomson results, as expected, when recoil and Klein-Nishina reductions become important.
- OSTI ID:
- 21576763
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 733, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/733/1/61; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COMPTON EFFECT
ELECTRONS
EMISSION
GAMMA RADIATION
MAGNETIC FIELDS
PULSARS
QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS
BASIC INTERACTIONS
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
ELASTIC SCATTERING
ELECTRODYNAMICS
ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERACTIONS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
FERMIONS
FIELD THEORIES
INTERACTIONS
IONIZING RADIATIONS
LEPTONS
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
RADIATIONS
SCATTERING