Related papers: A Tale of Two Current Sheets
I outline, from a theoretical and somewhat personal perspective, significant features of Pulsar Wind Nebulae as Cosmic Accelerators. I discuss recent studies of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe). I pay special attention to the recently discovered…
The equatorial current sheet in pulsar magnetospheres is often regarded as an ideal site for particle acceleration via relativistic reconnection. Using 2D spherical particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate particle acceleration in the…
Rapidly rotating neutron stars blow a relativistic, magnetized wind mainly composed of electron-positron pairs. The free expansion of the wind terminates far from the neutron star where a weakly magnetized pulsar wind nebula forms, implying…
Soon after the discovery of radio pulsars in 1967, the pulsars are identified as strongly magnetic (typically $10^{12}$G) rapidly rotating ($\sim 10^{2}-0.1$ Hz) neutron stars. However, the mechanism of particle acceleration in the pulsar…
In this contribution we review the recent progress in the modeling of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWN). We start with a brief overview of the relevant physical processes in the magnetosphere, the wind-zone and the inflated nebula bubble. Radiative…
I survey recent successes in the application of relativistic MHD and force-free electrodynamics to the modeling of the pulsars' rotational energy loss mechanism as well as to the structure and emission characteristics of Pulsar Wind…
Pulsar wind nebulae are efficient particle accelerators, and yet the processes at work remain elusive. Self-generated, microturbulence is too weak in relativistic magnetized shocks to accelerate particles over a wide energy range,…
We review current theoretical ideas on pulsar winds and their surrounding nebulae. Relativistic MHD models of the wind of the aligned rotator, and of the striped wind, together with models of magnetic dissipation are discussed. It is shown…
The formation of a large-scale current sheet is a generic feature of pulsar magnetospheres. If the magnetic axis is misaligned with the star rotation axis, the current sheet is an oscillatory structure filling an equatorial wedge determined…
We present first-principles relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of the oblique pulsar magnetosphere with pair formation. The magnetosphere starts to form with particles extracted from the surface of the neutron star. These particles…
Pulsars and central engines of long gamma ray burst -- collapsars -- may produce highly magnetized (Poynting flux dominated) outflows expanding in a dense surrounding (interstellar medium or stellar material). For certain injection…
I review the current status of our theoretical understanding of Pulsar Winds and associated nebulae (PWNe). In recent years, axisymmetric models of pulsar winds with a latitude dependent energy flux have proved very successful at explaining…
We review the recent advances in the pulsar high-energy $\gamma$-ray observation and the electrodynamics of the pulsar magnetospheres from the early vacuum model to the recent plasma-filled models by the numerical simulations. The numerical…
According to magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models, the rotational energy of a rapidly spinning neutron star is carried away by a relativistic wind and deposited at a large distance, in the nebula, downstream of the wind termination shock. The…
Relativistic current sheets have been proposed as the sites of dissipation in pulsar winds, jets in active galaxies and other Poynting-flux dominated flows. It is shown that the steady versions of these structures differ from their…
Rotating neutron stars, or pulsars, are plausibly the source of power behind many astrophysical systems, such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants. In the past several years, 3D numerical simulations…
We perform first-principles relativistic particle-in-cell simulations of aligned pulsar magnetosphere. We allow free escape of particles from the surface of a neutron star and continuously populate the magnetosphere with neutral pair plasma…
Turbulent flows in the solar wind, large scale current sheets, multiple current sheets, and shock waves lead to the formation of environments in which a dense network of current sheets is established and sustains "turbulent reconnection".…
We present first results of three dimensional relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulations of Pulsar Wind Nebulae. They show that the kink instability and magnetic dissipation inside these nebulae may be the key processes allowing to…
We discuss axisymmetric force-free pulsar magnetospheres with magnetically collimated jets and a disk-wind obtained by numerical solution of the pulsar equation. This solution represents an alternative to the quasi-spherical wind solutions…