Related papers: Three-Dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations …
A complete set of diagnostic tools aimed at producing synthetic synchrotron emissivity, polarization, and spectral index maps from relativistic MHD simulations is presented. As a first application we consider here the case of the emission…
The discovery of rapid synchrotron gamma-ray flares above 100 MeV from the Crab Nebula has attracted new interest in alternative particle acceleration mechanisms in pulsar wind nebulae. Diffuse shock-acceleration fails to explain the flares…
We have investigated the relaxation of a hydrostatic hot plasma column containing toroidal magnetic field by the Current-Driven (CD) kink instability as a model of pulsar wind nebulae. In our simulations the CD kink instability is excited…
The morphology of young Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWN) is largely determined by the properties of the wind injected by the pulsar. We have used a recent parametrization of the wind obtained from Force Free Electrodynamics simulations of pulsar…
Of the known pulsar wind nebulae, 8 are good candidates for being in the early stage of evolution where the wind nebula is interacting with the freely expanding supernova ejecta. Several of these have been identified with historical…
Recent discoveries of the intriguing ``jet-torus'' structure in the Crab Nebula and other pulsar nebulae prompted calls for re-examining of their theory. The most radical proposals involve abolishing of the MHD approximation altogether and…
In the late 1960s the discovery of the Crab pulsar in its associated supernova remnant, launched a new field in supernova remnant research: the study of pulsar-driven or plerionic supernova remnants. In these type of remnants, the…
Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) are ideal astrophysical laboratories where high energy relativistic phenomena can be investigated. They are close, well resolved in our observations, and the knowledge derived in their study has a strong impact in…
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…
Magnetic dissipation is frequently invoked as a way of powering the observed emission of relativistic flows in Gamma Ray Bursts and Active Galactic Nuclei. Pulsar Wind Nebulae provide closer to home cosmic laboratories which can be used to…
We present results of new three-dimensional (3D) general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of rapidly rotating strongly magnetized core collapse. These simulations are the first of their kind and include a microphysical…
The main goal of our present work is to provide, for the first time, a simple computational tool that can be used to compute the brightness, the spectral index, the polarization, the time variability and the spectrum of the non-thermal…
We study the transport of high-energy particles in pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) using three-dimensional MHD (see Porth et al. (2014) for details) and test-particle simulations, as well as a Fokker-Planck particle transport model. The latter…
Bow-shock pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) show a variety of morphological shapes. We attribute this diversity to the geometrical factors: relative orientations of the pulsar rotation axis, proper velocity, and the line of sight (magnetic…
We present initial results of the first self-consistent numerical model of the outer magnetosphere of a pulsar. By using the relativistic ``particle-in-cell'' method with special boundary conditions to represent plasma dynamics in 3D, we…
In this paper we present, for the first time, simulated maps of the circularly polarized synchrotron emission from the Crab nebula, using multidimensional state of the art models for the magnetic field geometry. Synchrotron emission is the…
The Crab Nebula is one of the most efficient accelerators in the Galaxy and the only galactic source showing direct evidence of PeV particles. In spite of this, the physical process behind such effective acceleration is still a deep…
We present a first 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of oxygen, neon and carbon shell burning in a rapidly rotating 16 M_sun core-collapse supernova progenitor. We also run a purely hydrodynamic simulation for comparison. After 180s…
After discussion of observational constraints on the nature of the MHD wind coupling between the Crab Pulsar and the Crab Nebula, the theory of transverse relativistic shock structure is reviewed and applied to the interpretation of the…
The spin-down power of a pulsar is thought to be carried away in an MHD wind in which, at least close to the star, the energy transport is dominated by Poynting flux. The pulsar drives a low-frequency wave in this wind, consisting of…