Particle acceleration and radiation reaction in strong spherical electromagnetic waves

Abstract

Strongly magnetized and fast rotating neutron stars are known to be efficient particle accelerators within their magnetosphere and wind. They are suspected to accelerate leptons, protons and maybe ions to extreme relativistic regimes where the radiation reaction significantly feeds back to their motion. In the vicinity of neutron stars, magnetic field strengths are close to the critical value of $B_{\rm c} \sim 4.4\times10^9$T and particle Lorentz factors of the order $\gamma \sim 10^9$ are expected. In this paper, we investigate the acceleration and radiation reaction feedback in the pulsar wind zone where a large amplitude low frequency electromagnetic wave is launched starting from the light-cylinder. We design a semi-analytical code solving exactly the particle equation of motion including radiation reaction in the Landau-Lifshits approximation for a null-like electromagnetic wave of arbitrary strength parameter and elliptical polarization. Under conventional pulsar conditions, asymptotic Lorentz factor as high as $10^8-10^9$ are reached at large distances from the neutron star. However, we demonstrate that in the wind zone, within the spherical wave approximation, radiation reaction feedback remains negligible.