THE DEUTSCH FIELD GAMMA-RAY PULSAR - I - THE MODEL BASICS

A new model for the high-energy emission from pulsars is developed by considering charged particle motion in the fields of a spinning, highl y magnetized and conducting sphere in vacuum. A generally applicable a pproximation to the particle motion in strong fields is developed and applied to the numerical modelling, and the radiation emitted by curva ture emission is summed to generate light curves. The model predicts m any of the observed features of pulsar light curves. This paper outlin es the basic properties of the model; a subsequent paper will discuss the statistical properties of a population of model pulsars and apply the model to the known gamma-ray pulsars.