2001ApJ...551..867G

We present a model for the generation mechanism of the optical pulsations recently detected from the Geminga pulsar. We argue that the optical emission is just synchrotron radiation emitted along the 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 nonzero pitch angles as a result of the cyclotron absorption of radio waves in the magnetized pair plasma. This explains self-consistently both the apparent lack of radio emission, at least at frequencies higher than about 100 MHz, and the nature of pulsed optical emission from the Geminga pulsar. Our model implies that the power of the synchrotron radiation from Geminga peaks in the infrared band, which suggests that this pulsar should also be a source of pulsed infrared emission.