Some Difficulties with the Oblique Rotator Model for Pulsars

Abstract

PRACTICALLY all the available evidence up to now (short duration of pulses, rapid pulsing, slowing down of the period, association with past supernovae, and so on) suggests that pulsars are produced by rapidly rotating neutron stars. One of the first, and probably most widely discussed, models in this category is that proposed by Gold¹. The general feeling, however, is that Gold's hypothesis might be an oversimplification of the problem, because it is hard to understand that there is only one hot spot (or at the most two, if one counts the two pulsars with an interpulse^2,3) on the surface of the spinning neutron stars which remains active and at exactly the same position for at least many months.