Related papers: Magnetic energy dissipation and gamma-ray emission…
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…
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…
(abridged) Gamma-ray pulsars constitute a class of high and very high-energy emitters for which the known population is steadily increasing thanks to the Fermi/Large Area Telescope. In this paper, their gamma-ray luminosity and spectral…
The recently discovered soft gamma-ray emission from the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 1841-045 has a luminosity L_g ~ 10^{36} ergs/s. This luminosity exceeds the spindown power by three orders of magnitude and must be fed by an alternative…
We develop kinetic plasma models of pulsar magnetospheres with magnetic-field-line-dependent plasma injection that reveal the importance of various magnetosphere regions in regulating the gamma-ray emission. We set different particle…
Gamma-ray photons from young pulsars allow the deepest insight into the properties and interactions of high-energy particles with magnetic and photon fields in a pulsar magnetosphere. Measurements with the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory have…
The magnetosphere of a rotating pulsar naturally develops a current sheet beyond the light cylinder (LC). Magnetic reconnection in this current sheet inevitably dissipates a nontrivial fraction of the pulsar spin-down power within a few LC…
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…
Gamma-rays from pulsars can be efficiently attenuated in their magnetospheres via the mechanism of single-photon pair production and also the exotic QED process of photon splitting, which become prolific in fields approaching the quantum…
We investigate a stationary pair production cascade in the outer magnetosphere of an isolated, spinning neutron star. The charge depletion due to global flows of charged particles, causes a large electric field along the magnetic field…
Pulsar magnetospheres are filled with relativistic pairs copiously emitting photons detected from the radio wavelengths up to high and very high energies, in the GeV and sometimes in the TeV range. Efficient particle acceleration converts…
The pulsar light curves and energy spectra are explored in dissipative pulsar magnetospheres with the Aristotelian electrodynamics (AE), where particle acceleration is fully balanced with radiation reaction. The AE magnetospheres with…
Polarization is a powerful diagnostic tool to constrain the site of the high-energy pulsed emission and particle acceleration in gamma-ray pulsars. Recent particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetosphere suggest that high-energy…
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…
The spectral characteristics of the pulsed gamma-ray emission from outer-magnetospheric particle accelerators are investigated. Either positrons or electrons are accelerated outwards by the magnetic-field-aligned electric field to emit…
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 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…
My thesis deals with a fundamental question of high energy gamma-ray astronomy. Namely, I studied the cut-off shape of the Crab pulsar spectrum to distinguish between the leading scenarios for the pulsar models. Pulsars are celestial…
The guiding center formalism is employed to analyze the motion of a charged relativistic particle in an inhomogeneous magnetic field, subject to magnetic mirroring and energy loss due to cooling. The governing equation for the evolution of…
Pulsed emission from gamma-ray pulsars originates inside the magnetosphere, from radiation by charged particles accelerated near the magnetic poles or in the outer gaps. In polar cap models, the high energy spectrum is cut off by magnetic…