The radiation of rotating magnetic dipoles in vacuo in general relativity

An approximate solution of Maxwell's equations for the rotating oblique magnetic dipole is given on the geometrical background of the Schwarzschild metric. The energy radiation is calculated for both the case of the Schwarzschild geometry and the linearized Kerr metric on the basis of the Newman-Penrose formalism. It is shown that general relativistic effects are not sufficient to explain by themselves the experimentally measured slowdown laws of realistic pulsars.