The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society (천문학회보)
- Volume 36 Issue 1
- /
- Pages.54.2-54.2
- /
- 2011
- /
- 1226-2692(pISSN)
Dynamics of charged particles around a compact star with strong radiation
- Oh, Jae-Sok (Department of physics and astronomy, Seoul National University) ;
- Kim, Hong-Su (KVN, KASI) ;
-
Lee, Hyung-Mok
(Department of physics and astronomy, Seoul National University)
- Published : 2011.04.05
Abstract
It is the conventional wisdom that the Poynting-Robertson effect is essentially the outcome of the interplay between absorption and reemission processes. For a better understanding of the motion of charged particles around a compact star with strong radiation, we reached an alternative interpretation for the Poynting-Robertson effect based on the covariant formalism and found that it is attributed to the combination of the aberration and the Lorentz transformation of the radiation stress-energy tensor. As a general relativistic application of the Poynting-Robertson effect, we studied the dynamics of test particles around the spinning relativistic star with strong radiation. We discovered that the combination of the angular momentum and the finite size of the star generates "radiation counter drag" which exerts on the test particle to enhance its specific angular momentum, contrary to the radiation drag. The balance of the radiation drag and the radiation counter drag renders the particle to hover around the spinning luminous star at the "suspension orbit". The radial position and the angular velocity of the particle on the "suspension orbit" are determined by the angular momentum, the luminosity, and the size of the central star only, and they are independent of the initial position and velocity of the particle.
Keywords