On the optical pulsations from the Geminga pulsar

We present a model for generation mechanisms of the optical pulsations recently detected from the Geminga pulsar. We argue that this is just a synchrotron radiation emitted along open magnetic field lines at altitudes of a few light cylinder radii (which requires that Geminga is an almost aligned rotator), where charged particles acquire non-zero pitch-angles as a result of the cyclotron absorption of radio waves in the magnetized pair plasma. This explains self-consistently both the lack of apparent radio emission, at least at frequencies higher than about 100 MHz, and the optical pulsations from the Geminga pulsar. From our model it follows that the synchrotron radiation is a maximum in the infrared band, which suggests that Geminga should also be a source of a pulsed infrared emission.