Related papers: Toward a Realistic Pulsar Magnetosphere
Pulsar electrodynamics has been built up by taking ingredients from two models, the vacuum-dipole model, which ignores the magnetosphere but includes the inductive electric field due to the obliquely rotating magnetic dipole, and the…
In this paper we present the results of time-dependent simulations of dipolar axisymmetric magnetospheres of neutron stars carried out both within the framework of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics and within the framework of resistive…
We investigate the axisymmetric magnetosphere of an aligned rotating magnetic dipole surrounded by an ideal force-free plasma. We concentrate on the magnetic field structure around the point of intersection of the separatrix between the…
The magnetospheres of magnetars are believed to be filled with electron-positron plasma generated by electric discharge. We present a first direct numerical experiment showing how the plasma is created in an axisymmetric closed…
We argue that existing models of the ideal pulsar magnetosphere are incorrect because of the improper treatment of the singular current layer outside the light cylinder. We simulated the axisymmetric pulsar magnetosphere in the Force-Free…
In this work, we consider the possibility of energy release in pulsar magnetospheres deformed by gravitational waves from nearby sources. The strong electromagnetic fields in the magnetospheres may release non-negligible energy despite the…
All numerical solutions of the pulsar magnetosphere over the past 25 years show closed-line regions that end a significant distance inside the light cylinder, and manifest thick strongly dissipative separatrix surfaces instead of thin…
We report on a remarkable class of exact solutions to force-free electrodynamics that has four-current along the light cones of an arbitrary timelike worldline in flat spacetime. No symmetry is assumed, and the solutions are given in terms…
Neutron stars are fascinating astrophysical objects immersed in strong gravitational and electromagnetic fields, at the edge of our current theories. These stars manifest themselves mostly as pulsars, emitting a timely very stable and…
We consider the electron-positron plasma generation processes in the magnetospheres of magnetars - neutron stars with strong surface magnetic fields, B = 10^(14) - 10^(15) G. We show that the photon splitting in a magnetic field, which is…
We perform 2.5D axisymmetric simulations of the pulsar magnetosphere (aligned dipole rotator) using the charge conservative, relativistic, electromagnetic particle in cell code PICsar. Particle in cell codes are a powerful tool to use for…
Some of the most energetic pulsars exhibit rotation-modulated gamma-ray emission in the $0.1$ to $100$ GeV band. The luminosity of this emission is typically $0.1\text{-}10\%$ of the pulsar spin-down power (gamma-ray efficiency), implying…
The extraordinary energetic activity of magnetars is usually explained in terms of dissipation of a huge internal magnetic field of the order of $10^{15-16}$G. How such a strong magnetic field can originate during the formation of a neutron…
Magnetic fields are fundamental to the dynamics of the interstellar medium (ISM) in spiral galaxies and are often separated into large-scale, regular ($\boldsymbol{B}$) and small-scale, random ($\boldsymbol{b}$) components. The thermal…
The behaviour of a relativistic electron-positron plasma in the pulsar magnetosphere is investigated. The equation of the motion of the magnetospheric plasma is discussed, from which it follows that, if the plasma particle radial velocity…
We continue our investigation of particle acceleration in the pulsar equatorial current sheet (ECS) that began with Contopoulos (2019) and Contopoulos & Stefanou (2019). Our basic premise has been that the charge carriers in the current…
It has recently been demonstrated that self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations of low-obliquity pulsar magnetospheres in flat spacetime show weak particle acceleration and no pair production near the poles. We investigate the validity…
Based on the exact dipolar solution of the pulsar equation the self-consistent two-fluid model of the pulsar magnetosphere is developed. We concentrate on the low-mass limit of the model, taking into account the radiation damping. As a…
The physics of the pulsar inner magnetosphere remains poorly constrained by observations. Although about 2000 pulsars have been discovered to date, little is known about their emission mechanism. Large vacuum gaps probably exist and a…
The number of pulsars with detected emission at X-ray and gamma-ray energies has been steadily growing, showing that beams of high-energy particles are commonly accelerated in pulsar magnetospheres, even though the location and number of…