Electric field screening in pair discharges and generation of pulsar radio emission

Understand

Pulsar radio emission may be generated in pair discharges which fill the pulsar magnetosphere with plasma as an accelerating electric field is screened by freshly created pairs.

• In this Letter we develop a simplified analytic theory for the screening of the electric field in these pair discharges and use it to estimate total radio luminosity and spectrum.
• The discharge has three stages.
• First, the electric field is screened for the first time and starts to oscillate.