Curvature-drift instability fails to generate pulsar radio emission

Abstract

The curvature-drift instability has long been considered as a viable mechanism for pulsar radio emission. We reconsidered this mechanism by finding an explicit solution describing the propagation of short electromagnetic waves in a plasma flow along curved magnetic field lines.We show that even though the waves could be amplified, the amplification factor remains very close to unity; therefore, this mechanism is unable to generate high brightness temperature emission from initial weak fluctuations. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.