Synchrotron model for the high-energy emission of pulsars

model for the infrared, optical and soft X-ray emission of pulsar is presented. It is based on anisotropic synchrotron emission by relativistic particles in an outer gap scenario with a single energy distribution N(gamma) alpha gamma(-2). Such a distribution is naturally produced in an efficient pair cascade. The energy of the primary particles is limited by synchrotron radiation to gamma(p) similar to 10(7). It is shown that this synchrotron model is able to reproduce the spectral shape between the infrared and soft X-rays and also the corresponding luminosities for the Crab pulsar. In particular, the long standing problem of the rapid spectral decline towards infrared frequencies is understandable as emission at very small pitch angles from low energy particles with gamma greater than or similar to 10. It is also shown that the scaling of the synchrotron model explains the observed correlation between the X-ray luminosity and the spin-down luminosity of the neutron star L-x similar to 10(-3) L-sd.