GENERAL-RELATIVISTIC CORRECTIONS IN THE GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM PULSARS

We examine the importance of general relativistic corrections to the production of gamma rays near the surface of a neutron star. Due to the change in the magnetic dipole held in curved spacetime, the polar cap angle decreases by 30% compared to flat spacetime. However, the curved photon trajectories compensate for the decrease in the polar cap angle, and, as a result, the pulse profile of the photons emitted parallel to the field is expected to be very similar in curved spacetime and in flat spacetime. We find that the curved spacetime metric significantly increases the magnitude of the magnetic field and, therefore, the attenuation coefficients of curvature radiation gamma rays for pair production in a magnetic field can be increased by factors as large as 100. As a result the survival distance of 1 GeV photons for pair production is decreased by a factor of 2 for B similar to 10(12) G.