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Abstract

A number of possible pulsar radio emission mechanisms are based on streaming instabilities in relativistically hot electron–positron pair plasmas. At saturation, the unstable waves can, in principle, form stable solitary waves, which could emit the observed intense radio signals. We searched for the proper plasma parameters that would lead to the formation of solitons, and investigated their properties and dynamics as well as the resulting oscillations of electrons and positrons that possibly lead to radio wave emission. We utilized a one-dimensional version of the relativistic particle-in-cell code ACRONYM initialized with an appropriately parameterized one-dimensional Maxwell–Jüttner particle distribution in velocity space to study the evolution of the resulting streaming instability in a pulsar pair plasma. We found that strong electrostatic superluminal L-mode solitons are formed for plasmas with normalized inverse temperatures ρ ≥ 1.66 or relative beam drift speeds with Lorentz factors γ > 40. The parameters of the solitons fulfill the conditions for wave emission. For appropriate pulsar parameters the resulting energy densities of superluminal solitons can reach 1.1 × 10⁵ erg cm⁻³, while those of subluminal solitons reach only 1.2 × 10⁴ erg cm⁻³. Estimated energy densities of up to 7 × 10¹² erg cm⁻³suffice to explain pulsar nanoshots.