Related papers: Dissipation of the striped pulsar wind
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process converting magnetic energy into not only plasma energy but also particle energy in various astrophysical phenomena. In this letter, we show a unique dataset of a solar flare where…
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…
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…
A rotating pulsar creates a surrounding pulsar wind nebula (PWN) by steadily releasing an energetic wind into the interior of the expanding shockwave of supernova remnant or interstellar medium. At the termination shock of a PWN, 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…
A rotating star with a monopole (or split monopole) magnetic field gives the simplest, prototype model of a rotationally driven stellar wind. Winds from compact objects, in particular neutron stars, carry strong magnetic fields with modest…
Fast reconnection in magnetically dominated plasmas is widely invoked in models of dissipation in pulsar winds, gamma-ray flares in the Crab nebula, and to explain the radio nanoshots of pulsars. When current sheets evolve reaching a…
Magnetohydrodynamical simulations are presented of a magnetized pulsar wind interacting directly with the interstellar medium, or, in the case of a surrounding supernova remnant, with the associated freely expanding ejecta of the progenitor…
A magnetically dominated plasma driven by motions on boundaries at which magnetic field lines are anchored is forced to dissipate the work being done upon it, no matter how small the electrical resistivity. Numerical experiments have…
Turbulence is a chaotic flow regime filled by irregular flows. The dissipation of turbulence is a fundamental problem in the realm of physics. Theoretically, dissipation cannot be ultimately achieved without collisions, and so how turbulent…
The dissipation of turbulent magnetic fields is an appealing scenario to explain the origin of non-thermal particles in high-energy astrophysical sources. However, it has been suggested that the particle distribution may effectively…
Flows in which energy is transported predominantly as Poynting flux are thought to occur in pulsars, gamma-ray bursts and relativistic jets from compact objects. The fluctuating component of the magnetic field in such a flow can in…
We study linear and nonlinear development of relativistic and ultrarelativistic current sheets of pair plasmas with antiparallel magnetic fields. Two types of two-dimensional problems are investigated by particle-in-cell simulations. First,…
Synchrotron radiation of ultra-relativistic particles accelerated in a pulsar wind nebula may dominate its spectrum up to gamma-ray energies. Because of the short cooling time of the gamma-ray emitting electrons, the gamma-ray emission zone…
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…
Magnetic energy around compact objects often dominates over plasma rest mass, and its dissipation can power the object luminosity. We describe a dissipation mechanism which works faster than magnetic reconnection. The mechanism involves two…
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…
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…
Pulsars, or more generally rotation powered neutron stars, are excellent factories of antimatter in the Galaxy, in the form of pairs of electrons and positrons. Electrons are initially extracted from the surface of the star by the intense…
A statistical relationship between magnetic reconnection, current sheets and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind is reported for the first time using in-situ measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We identify intermittency as…