Related papers: The Extended Pulsar Magnetosphere
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…
I review the theoretical understanding of the global structure of pulsar magnetospheres concentrating on recent progress in force-free electrodynamics and first-principles simulations of magnetospheres.
In this review, I will first introduce possible methods to probe the large-scale magnetic fields in our Galaxy and discuss their limitations. The magnetic fields in the Galactic halo, mainly revealed by the sky distribution of rotation…
Nonlinear ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the propagation and expansion of a magnetic "bubble" plasma into a lower density, weakly-magnetized background plasma are presented. These simulations mimic the geometry and…
An exact analytic solution is obtained for a uniformly expanding, neutral, infinitely conducting plasma sphere in an external dipole magnetic field. The electrodynamical aspects related to the radiation and transformation of energy were…
New exact solutions of the steady and incompressible 2D MHD equations in polar coordinates are presented. The solutions describe the process of reconnective magnetic annihilation in a curved current layer. They are particularly interesting…
We evaluate the result of the recent pioneering numerical simulations in Spitkovsky~2006 on the spindown of an oblique relativistic magnetic dipole rotator. Our discussion is based on our experience from two idealized cases, that of an…
With the help of 3D MHD simulations we investigate the collapse and fragmentation of rotating turbulent prestellar core embedded into turbulent medium. The numerical code is based on a high resolution Godunov-type finite-difference scheme.…
Current models of gamma-ray lightcurves in pulsars suffer from large uncertainties on the precise location of particle acceleration and radiation. Here, we present an attempt to alleviate these difficulties by solving for the…
We want to understand what drives magnetospheric dissipation in the equatorial current sheet. Numerical simulations have limitations and, unless we have a clear a priori understanding of the physical processes involved, their results can be…
We formulate variation principle for force-free magnetosphere of an inclined pulsar: ${\cal E} +{\bf \Omega}\cdot {\bf M}$ ($\cal E$, ${\bf M}$ are electromagnetic energy and angular momentum, ${\bf \Omega}$ is the angular velocity of a…
We present results of global 3D MHD simulations of disk accretion to a rotating star with dipole and more complex magnetic fields using a Godunov-type code based on the "cubed sphere" grid developed earlier in our group. We describe the…
We carry out 3D and 2D PIC-simulations of the expansion of a magnetized plasma that initially uniformly fills a half-space and contains a semi-cylindrical region of heated electrons elongated along the surface of the plasma boundary. This…
We perform MHD modeling of a single bright coronal loop to include the interaction with a non-uniform magnetic field. The field is stressed by random footpoint rotation in the central region and its energy is dissipated into heating by…
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…
We have employed a 3-d energy-conserving radiation MHD code to simulate the vertical structure and thermodynamics of a shearing box whose parameters were chosen so that the radiation and gas pressures would be comparable. The upper layers…
The wealth of high-energy (E > 50 MeV) and very-high-energy (E > 100 GeV) data accumulated over the past few years have provided unprecedented opportunities to probe pulsar emission models. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has now…
The recently constructed theory of radio wave propagation in the pulsar magnetosphere outlines the general aspects of the radio light curve and polarization formation. It allows us to describe general properties of mean profiles, such as…
This article introduces a new 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium solver, based on the concept of admissible variations of B, p that allows for magnetic relaxation of a magnetic field in a perturbed/non-minimum energy state to a lower…
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…