Can the inner gap sparking take place in millisecond pulsars?

The inner vacuum gap model has become the foundation stone of most theories on pulsar radio emission. The fundamental picture of this model is the sparking, which was conjectured to be induced by magnetic absorption of background gamma photons. However, a question is, can the sparking be triggered in the millisecond pulsars (MSPs) with magnetic fields (B) only about 10(8) G? We investigate this problem by including the pair production above the inner gap. Under the assumption that the magnetic field is dipolar, our results show the background gamma-ray emission can not be the key factor that triggers the sparking, at least not in MSPs with B similar to 10(8) G, if the temperature in the polar cap region is only so high as is observed (< 4 x 10(6) K). Some other mechanisms are required.Astronomy & AstrophysicsSCI(E)中国科学引文数据库(CSCD)2ARTICLE5443-452