PSR B2111+46: a test of the inverse Compton scattering model of radio emission

¹ National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jia 20 Datun Road, Beijing 100012, PR China e-mail: [zhanghui;hjl]@bao.ac.cn
² Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Bejing 100871, PR China e-mail: gin@pku.edu.cn;k.j.lee@water.pku.edu.cn
³ Center for Astrophysics, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510400, PR China e-mail: cosmic008@263.net

Received: 11 October 2006
Accepted: 19 December 2006

Abstract

The region in which pulsars radiate is very important to constrain pulsar emission mechanisms. A three-dimensional (3D) method to calculate emission heights is developed in this paper. As an example, radiation regions for different components at different frequencies have been calculated for PSR B2111+46. Emission components at seven frequencies are fitted with Gaussian components, then the radiation heights for emission components are calculated. We found that different emission components, even if at the same radio frequency, are radiated from different heights. This is probably a common phenomena and challenges any emission mechanisms. The inverse Compton scattering emission model for pulsar radio emission can explain these results well.