# RADIO QUIET PULSARS WITH ULTRA-STRONG MAGNETIC FIELDS

## 1. INTRODUCTION

The magnetic fields of pulsars have traditionally been inferred through measurement of both a period $`P`$ and a period derivative $`\dot{P}`$. Presuming that the increase in period results from spin-down of the neutron star due to electromagnetic dipole radiation energy loss, the derived surface field is (Shapiro & Teukolsky 1983; Usov & Melrose 1995) $`B_0=6.4\times 10^{19}(P\dot{P})^{1/2}`$Gauss; this estimate assumes a braking index of 3, and a uniformly magnetized stellar interior as opposed to the Manchester and Taylor (1977) convention of a pure dipole field. A plot of $`P`$ vs. $`\dot{P}`$ for radio pulsars with measured $`\dot{P}`$ is shown in Figure 1. The derived surface fields of these pulsars spans a range of five decades from $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}\times 10^8`$ Gauss to $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}\times 10^{13}`$ Gauss, as indicated by the diagonal lines of constant $`B_0`$. No radio pulsars have inferred fields above this range, even though known selection effects for a given pulsar age do not a priori prevent their detection (Cordes, private communication). Also shown in Figure 1 is the so-called “death line,” with $`\dot{P}P^3=\text{const.}`$ (i.e. for fixed open field line voltage), to the right of which there are no detected pulsars. The absence of radio pulsars at periods larger than 5s has been explained as a turn-off in the radio emission when the $`\gamma `$-rays emitted by particles accelerated near the polar cap cannot produce electron-positron pairs (Sturrock 1971; Ruderman & Sutherland 1975; Arons 1983).

In addition to the radio pulsars, we have plotted in Figure 1 the AXPs having measured $`P`$ and $`\dot{P}`$. The AXPs are a group of six or seven pulsating X-ray sources with periods around 6-12 seconds, which are anomalous in comparison with average characteristics of known accreting X-ray pulsars. They are bright, steady X-ray sources having luminosities $`L_X10^{35}\mathrm{erg}\mathrm{s}^1`$, they show no sign of any companion, are steadily spinning down, and have ages $`\tau 10^5`$ years. Those which have measured $`\dot{P}`$ (e.g. Mereghetti & Stella 1995; Gotthelf & Vasisht 1998) are shown in Table 1 and have derived magnetic fields between $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{14}`$ and $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{15}`$ Gauss, assuming that they are spinning down due to dipole radiation torques. The soft gamma-ray repeaters (SGRs) are another type of high-energy source that has recently joined this group of highly magnetized neutron stars. SGRs are transient $`\gamma `$-ray burst sources that undergo repeated outbursts. There are four known SGR sources (one newly discovered: Kouveliotou, et al. 1998b), with two (SGRs 1806-20 and 0525-66) associated with young ($`\tau <10^5`$ yr) supernova remnants. Recently, 7.47s and 5.16s pulsations have been discovered (Kouveliotou, et al. 1998a,c; Hurley et al. 1998) in the quiescent X-ray emission of SGRs 1806-20 and 1900+14, respectively, with SGR 1900+14 exhibiting a 5.15s period in a $`\gamma `$-ray burst (Cline et al. 1998). In the $`P\dot{P}`$ diagram, both AXPs and SGRs live in a separate region above the detected radio pulsars. Such a class of highly magnetized neutron stars, or “magnetars”, was postulated as a model for SGRs (Thompson & Duncan 1993) and more recently also for the AXPs (Thompson & Duncan 1996). According to the model, magnetars are neutron stars born with millisecond periods that generate magnetic fields above $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{14}`$ Gauss by dynamo action due to convective turbulence.

This paper argues that there is a simple physical reason (within the confines of polar cap surface emission models) why radio emission should be absent in pulsars with ultra-strong fields. The behaviour of quantum mechanical radiation processes in magnetar-type fields is distinctly different from that of conventional radio pulsars, where $`B_010^{13}`$Gauss. While the purely quantum process of single-photon pair production $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ is commonly invoked in radio pulsar models (following Sturrock 1971) of sources such as the Crab and Vela, at the high field strengths appearing in magnetars, the more exotic process of photon splitting, $`\gamma \gamma \gamma `$, can become quite probable. The splitting of one photon into two lower energy ones (the rate for which was first calculated correctly by Adler et al. 1970; Bialynicka-Birula & Bialynicki-Birula 1970; and Adler 1971), which is third-order (in the fine structure constant) in quantum electrodynamics (QED), can act as a competitor to pair creation $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ as an attenuation mechanism for gamma-rays. Photon splitting is also a purely quantum effect, and has appreciable reaction rates (Adler 1971; Baring & Harding 1997) only when the magnetic field is at least a significant fraction of the quantum critical field $`B_{\mathrm{cr}}=4.413\times 10^{13}`$Gauss; it forms the centerpiece of the discussion here due to its potential for suppressing the creation of pairs. Presuming that a plentiful supply of pairs is a prerequisite for, and maybe also guarantees, coherent radio emission at observable levels (a premise of standard polar cap models for radio pulsars: e.g. Sturrock 1971; Ruderman & Sutherland 1975; Arons 1983), an immediate consequence of the suppression of pair creation in pulsars is that detectable radio fluxes should be strongly inhibited. We propose here that when splitting $`\gamma \gamma \gamma `$ dominates the attenuation of gamma-rays, pulsars should be radio quiet.

## 2. CRITERION FOR RADIO QUIESCENCE

The determination of the pulsar parameter space (i.e. $`B_0`$, $`P`$, $`\dot{P}`$) when such a suppression of pairs by photon splitting becomes efficient is therefore of paramount interest. To do this, one must compare the attenuation probabilities of photons by the two quantum processes, $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ and $`\gamma \gamma \gamma `$, during their passage through the pulsar magnetosphere from emission points near the stellar surface. Polar cap pulsar models invoke an electric field $`E_{}`$ parallel to B that rapidly accelerates electrons and/or positrons to Lorentz factors of around $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^5`$$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^7`$ (e.g. Ruderman & Sutherland 1975; Arons 1983; Usov & Melrose 1995; Harding & Muslimov 1998). If the polar field $`B_0`$ is not too high (Harding & Muslimov 1998), these energetic particles radiate curvature photons (Daugherty & Harding 1982), while resonant Compton scattering of quasi-thermal X-rays from the stellar surface is the dominant radiation production mechanism (Sturner 1995; Harding & Muslimov 1998) when $`B10^{13}`$ Gauss. These emission processes beam the primary radiation into a very narrow cone virtually aligned with the local magnetic field. Non-zero attenuation coefficients $`T(\omega ,\theta _{\mathrm{kB}})`$ (defined as the rate divided by $`c`$) for $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ and $`\gamma \gamma \gamma `$ are only possible for oblique angles $`\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$ of photon propagation with respect to the field: this can be deduced from the Lorentz transformation property (Baring & Harding 1998) $`T(\omega ,\theta _{\mathrm{kB}})=\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}T(\omega \mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}},\pi /2)`$ for photons of energy $`\omega m_ec^2`$. Hence, to obtain significant optical depths to attenuation, propagation of radiation through the magnetosphere is essential to effect crossing of field lines.

Both $`\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$ and $`\omega \mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$ generally increase monotonically during propagation away from the polar cap (Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997). Pair creation cannot take place before its threshold of $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}m_ec^2/\mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$ is crossed during such propagation. Even though photon splitting has a lower rate (being a higher-order QED process), it may dominate pair creation because it has no threshold. This effect is illustrated in Fig. 1 of Baring & Harding (1997), which also exhibits clearly that $`T(\omega \mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}},\pi /2)`$ is a strongly increasing function of both $`\omega \mathrm{sin}\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$ and $`B`$ for both pair creation and photon splitting.

Computing attenuation probabilities of the two processes for photon propagation near a neutron star requires the incorporation of general relativistic effects (Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997; Baring & Harding 1998). Curved spacetime modifies photon trajectories from rectilinear propagation and therefore changes the values of $`\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}`$, redshifts photon energies, and increases the magnetic field in the local inertial frame. All three of these effects can lead to significant reductions in the attenuation lengths of the two quantum processes. Details of such attenuation calculations are deferred to Baring & Harding (1998); here we focus on their consequences. The first of these is that for both processes, due to the $`r^3`$ falloff of the dipole field, for each photon emission point there always exists (Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997) an energy called the escape energy, below which the magnetosphere is transparent to the radiation, and above which it is opaque and photon escape is prohibited. Such domains of opacity at high energies are a principal reason why the polar cap model predicts that pulsars like the Crab and Vela cannot be visible above a maximum energy $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{max}}`$ of a few GeV (Daugherty & Harding 1982), and perhaps (Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997) also why no emission is observed for PSR1509-58 above a few MeV.

An approximate measure of when the creation of pairs is strongly suppressed by photon splitting is when their escape energies $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{esc}}`$ are equal. A more accurate measure will require detailed simulation of splitting/pair cascades. Generally in fields surmised for Crab-like and Vela-like pulsars, $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{esc}}`$ for splitting exceeds that for $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ so that photon attenuation only takes place via conversions into pairs. In near critical and supercritical fields ($`BB_{\mathrm{cr}}`$), the opposite occurs (Harding, Baring & Gonthier 1997; Baring & Harding 1998) and splitting assumes the role of the dominant attenuation mechanism, strongly (but not totally) suppressing the creation of pairs. This effect appears to be inevitable, regardless of whether free pair creation or positronium formation is considered (Baring & Harding 1998), given the polarization properties of the photon production mechanisms of curvature and synchrotron radiation, and resonant Compton scattering, and those of the two attenuation processes.

The condition of equality of escape energies for splitting and pair creation therefore implicitly defines an approximate boundary of radio quiescence, which for a given colatitude $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ for the emission of a photon near the surface, corresponds (Baring & Harding 1998) to a particular value of the spin-down dipole field $`B_0`$. Such a $`(B_0,\mathrm{\Theta })`$ relationship can be quickly transformed into one between the principal radio pulsar observables, namely $`P`$, the pulsar period (in seconds), and $`\dot{P}`$, the period derivative. This is effected using the standard relationship $`\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Theta }=[2\pi R/(Pc)]^{1/2}`$ between the period and the polar cap size or colatitude $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ for a neutron star of radius $`R`$, modified (Baring & Harding 1998) by geometric distortions introduced by curved spacetime, and the dipole radiation formula (Shapiro & Teukolsky 1983; Usov & Melrose 1995) $`B_0=6.4\times 10^{19}(P\dot{P})^{1/2}`$Gauss. The boundary, thus transformed, is depicted in Figure 1 in the conventional $`P`$-$`\dot{P}`$ diagram for the radio pulsar population, and corresponds roughly to

$$\dot{P}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}7.9}\times 10^{13}\left(\frac{P}{1\text{sec}}\right)^{11/15}.$$
(1)   
The particular value $`11/15`$ of the index follows from the dependence of the rate of photon splitting on energy ($`\epsilon ^5`$), photon angles to the field ($`\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}^6`$), and the magnetic field in this regime (approximately proportional to $`B_0^{15/4}`$ for $`B_{\mathrm{cr}}B_04B_{\mathrm{cr}}`$), coupled with the fact that propagation guarantees that $`\theta _{\mathrm{kB}}\mathrm{\Theta }`$, and that the pair creation escape energy scales as $`\mathrm{\Theta }^1`$ (see Baring & Harding 1998). This putative boundary for radio quiescence, which is computed specifically for photon origin near the stellar surface, is comfortably located above the entire collection of radio pulsars, a situation that may be tested by the imminent dramatic increase in the population due to the new multi-beam Parkes survey (Manchester 1998). A study of self-consistent particle acceleration above a pulsar polar cap reveals that emission near the neutron star surface is expected for pulsars having $`B10^{13}`$ Gauss (Harding & Muslimov 1998), principally because the pair formation fronts are established in regimes where resonant Compton scattering dominates the cooling of primary electrons and created pairs.

Above the boundary, pair creation is strongly inhibited and by extension, pulsars should be radio quiet. The absence of radio pulsars in this high-$`B_0`$ region of phase space has become of much greater importance with the mounting observational evidence for neutron stars with such large fields. This evidence includes the detection of spin-down in the growing number of anomalous X-ray pulsars, which when combined with their association with young supernova remnants, has shifted the focus from accretion torques (e.g. Mereghetti & Stella 1995; van Paradijs, Taam & van den Heuvel 1995) to electromagnetic dipole torques (e.g. Vasisht & Gotthelf 1997) as the origin of the spin-down, implying immense supercritical ($`B_0>4.41\times 10^{13}`$Gauss) fields in these sources. These are radio quiet pulsars, as is the quiescent counterpart of SGR 1806-20, whose 7.47 second periodicity has only been very recently announced (Kouveliotou, et al. 1998a). The spin-down parameters for these sources, listed in Table 1, are used to derive their positions on the $`P`$$`\dot{P}`$ diagram in Figure 1. Our approximate boundary for radio quiescence neatly separates the radio loud and radio quiet pulsar populations. We contend that this pulsar dichotomy is a simple consequence of the quantum physics in strong fields discussed herein.

## 3. DISCUSSION

The location of the radio quiescence boundary above the detected radio pulsar population gives consistency with the assumption of high-energy photon emission at the rim of a standard polar cap: larger cap sizes would permit photons to acquire large angles to the field more quickly, pushing the quiescence boundary to lower $`B_0`$, in conflict with the data. In the extreme case where the emission does not arise at the polar caps but occurs in equatorial regions of the magnetosphere, as advocated (Baring & Harding 1995) in SGR models, photon splitting can dominate even more efficiently. There are a number of other reasons why the emission properties of ultra-magnetized pulsars far above the radio quiescence line may well be quite different. The fact that the observed luminosities of AXPs are much larger than their spin-down luminosities requires an alternative energy source to power their emission. Decay of the magnetic field, predicted to be much faster in magnetars than in radio pulsars (Thompson & Duncan 1996), may heat the neutron star surface and generate Alfvén waves that lead to particle acceleration and non-thermal emission in the magnetosphere. Since the energy density of these fields produces a high level of stress on the neutron star crust, continual glitches and crustal fracturing may occur. The emission from these sources will be governed by QED physics of ultra-strong fields, making them unique laboratories for the study of exotic processes such as photon splitting and even trident production, neutrino and muon pair production, or magnetic Čerenkov radiation, in addition to more commonplace mechanisms such as cyclotron/synchrotron radiation and resonant Compton scattering.

The observational expectations for high-field pulsar emission in the radio, X-ray and gamma-ray bands can be quickly summarized in view of the physical effect of suppression of pair creation. Clearly, radio luminosity should decline as the boundary of radio quiescence is approached from below, an effect that can be enhanced by the creation of pairs in low Landau levels (Harding & Daugherty 1983) or positronium formation (Usov & Melrose 1995) above $`B_06\times 10^{12}`$ Gauss. Note that photo-ionization and electric field dissociation of positronium can mute the effectiveness of bound state pair creation in inhibiting radio emission (such issues are discussed in Baring & Harding 1998). Since synchrotron radiation, the dominant emission of produced pairs, has a steeper spectrum than primary curvature or resonant Compton-scattered radiation, the absence of a synchrotron component should lead to a progressive flattening of pulsar gamma-ray spectra as $`B_0`$ is increased to values above $`4\times 10^{13}`$Gauss. In the magnetar regime of ultra-strong fields, the maximum energy of emission $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{max}}`$ is dictated by the escape energy $`\epsilon _{\mathrm{esc}}`$ for splitting; sample values are illustrated in Figure 1, indicating that SGR1806-20 in its quiescent state and the Kes 73 and 1E 1048-5937 AXPs would barely be visible at around 100 MeV. A decline in gamma-ray luminosity below the $`B_0/P^2`$ proportionality found for conventional gamma-ray pulsars (e.g. Thompson, et al. 1997) would also be expected. In the X-ray range, non-thermal spectra would probably also flatten as $`B_0`$ increased above $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}`$Gauss, as the cyclotron energy moved into the MeV range. However, at much higher fields, the AXPs exhibit steep X-ray continuum emission (and probably distinct from any hard X-ray or gamma-ray component), at luminosities far exceeding that available due to dipole spin-down. Hence, given that another mechanism for energy supply such as field decay (Thompson & Duncan 1996) must be operating in these sources, how their spectrum and luminosity in the X-ray band would depend on $`B_0`$ and $`P`$ is not well understood.

The prediction of a radio quiescence boundary, coupled with the expectations mentioned just above for emission properties in the soft gamma-ray band, provide strong observational tests for the quantum effects in strong magnetic fields relating to pair production and its suppression by photon splitting. Future studies by radio telescopes and measurements by X-ray experiments such as AXAF and XMM, and gamma-ray missions such as Integral and GLAST should delve deeper into the exciting phenomenon of pulsars with ultra-strong magnetic fields.

We thank Alex Muslimov, Jim Cordes and Eric Gotthelf for discussions. MGB acknowledges the support of a Compton Fellowship during the period when part of this research was completed. This work was supported by the NASA Astrophysics Theory Program.