Related papers: Three-dimensional Analytical Description of Magnet…
Neutron stars are among the most fascinating astrophysical sources, being characterized by strong gravity, densities about the nuclear one or even above, and huge magnetic fields. Their observational signatures can be extremely diverse…
(abridged) Pulsar activity and its related radiation mechanism are usually explained by invoking some plasma processes occurring inside the magnetosphere. Despite many detailed local investigations, the global electrodynamics around those…
In gamma-ray binaries neutron star is orbiting a companion that produces a strong stellar wind. We demonstrate that observed properties of "stellar wind"-"pulsar wind" interaction depend both on the overall wind thrust ratio, as well as…
The rotational period of isolated pulsars increases over time due to the extraction of angular momentum by electromagnetic torques. These torques also change the obliquity angle $\alpha$ between the magnetic and rotational axes. Although…
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…
The radio, optical, X-ray and gamma-ray nebulae that surround many pulsars are thought to arise from synchrotron and inverse Compton emission. The energy powering this emission, as well as the magnetic fields and relativistic particles, are…
We perform global particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres including pair production, ion extraction from the surface, frame dragging corrections, and high energy photon emission and propagation. In the case of oblique…
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…
Magnetic reconnection, a plasma process converting magnetic energy to particle kinetic energy, is often invoked to explain magnetic energy releases powering high-energy flares in astrophysical sources including pulsar wind nebulae and black…
Magnetized rotating neutron stars, or pulsars, are a possible end product of massive star evolution. Their relativistic wind successively interacts with the supernova ejecta of their defunct progenitor, then with the circumstellar medium of…
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…
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…
Pulsars steadily dissipate their rotational energy via relativistic winds. Confinement of these outflows generates luminous pulsar wind nebulae, seen across the electromagnetic spectrum in synchrotron and inverse Compton emission, and in…
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…
The current state of the art in pulsar magnetosphere modeling assumes the force-free limit of magnetospheric plasma. This limit retains only partial information about plasma velocity and neglects plasma inertia and temperature. We carried…
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…
Produced by the interaction between the ``pulsar wind'' powered by the rotational energy of a neutron star and its surroundings, the study of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) provides vital insight into the physics of neutron star magnetospheres…
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…
The mechanism by which the radiation received from obliquely rotating neutron stars is generated remains an open question half a century after the discovery of pulsars. In contrast, considerable progress has recently been made in…
We explore the effects of rapid rotation on the properties of neutrino-heated winds from proto-neutron stars (PNS) formed in core-collapse supernovae or neutron-star mergers by means of three-dimensional general-relativistic hydrodynamical…