Evidence Against Astrophysical Dyadospheres

Abstract

It is shown how pair production itself would almost certainly prevent the astrophysical formation of macroscopic dyadospheres, hypothetical regions, extending many electron Compton wavelengths in all directions, where the electric field exceeds the critical value for microscopically rapid Schwinger pair production. Pair production is a self-regulating process that would discharge a growing electric field, in the example of a hypothetical collapsing charged stellar core, before it reached 6% of the minimum dyadosphere value, keeping the pair production rate more than 26 orders of magnitude below the dyadosphere value, and keeping the efficiency below 0.0002 (M/M_sun)^{1/2}.

27 pages, LaTeX, shortened version of astro-ph/0605432 accepted 2006 Aug. 17 by The Astrophysical Journal, but also with some significant new material