Acceleration of High-Energy Cosmic Rays by Pulsars

Very large quantities of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation will be produced by the rotating, magnetic, neutron stars favored for pulsar models. It is shown that this radiation will accelerate particles injected into the wave field to energies in excess of ${10}^{18}$ eV (adopting parameters derived from the Crab object), that the spectral dependence accords with cosmic-ray observations, and that the total energy available is consistent with the observed density of these very high-energy particles. The maximum energy a proton can attain by this mechanism is of order ${\left(\frac{e^2}{Gm_p^{}{}_{}{}^2}\right)}^{\frac{1}{3}}\times \left(\mathrm{rest}\mathrm{mass}\right)$ or ≅${10}^{21}$ eV.