The braking indices in pulsar emission models

¹ National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20 Datun Road, Chaoyang, Beijing 100012, PR China
² School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
³ Institute of Astronomy, University of Zielona Góra, Lubuska 2, 65-265 Zielona Góra, Poland

Corresponding author: R. X. Xu, rxxu@bac.pku.edu.cn

Received: 2 June 2003
Accepted: 30 June 2003

Abstract

Using the method proposed in a previous paper, we calculate pulsar braking indices in the models with torque contributions from both inner and outer accelerating regions, assuming that the interaction between them is negligible. We suggest that it is likely that the inverse Compton scattering induced polar vacuum gap and the outer gap coexist in the pulsar magnetosphere. We include the new near threshold vacuum gap models with curvature-radiation and inverse Compton scattering induced cascades, respectively; and find that these models can well reproduce the measured values of the braking indices.