Why study pulsars optically?

Abstract

Observations of the five confirmed optical pulsars indicate that the peak emission scales according to the magnetic field strength at the light cylinder. To the accuracy that such low number allows we show that this gives further confirmation that a straightforward synchrotron model such as Pacini & Salvati (1987) still has validity. The derived relationships indicates that the emission mechanism is common across all of the pulsars and towards the edge of the light cylinder. In the future observations should include near and far infra red work to determine the long wave self absorption cut-off and polarization observations of all pulsars to restrict (to first order) emission zone geometry.