21-January-2009, 01:38 PM
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Order of Kilopi
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 4,165
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tusenfem
The problem is that that paper is discussing radio emission, which is much easier to generate than X-rays, a lot less energetic.
X-ray ~1017 Hz
Radio ~107 Hz
The electron-cyclotron maser has difficulties, if I am not mistaken, when the emitted frequency gets too high. First of all the frequency is magnetic field dependent:
f = q B / 2 pi m, so zou need a heck of a magnetic field to get to X-ray, about 106 Tesla, although you can win a bit with synchrotron-self-compton radiation, where the emitted photons are inverse-compton scattered at the energetic electrons that are creating the photons.
A pulsar has ~1012 gauss magnetic field at the pole (1 Gauss = 10-4 Tesla) and a radius of 12 km
A brown dwarf has a radius of Jupiter (~71000 km)
Conservation of magnetic flux then gives a dipole field of about (12-71000)2 = 3 10-8 smaller, waaaayyyyy below the needed value.
However, my gut feeling tells me that
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Is there something more you were going to say?
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