Related papers: Quantum Plasma Creation near a Magnetar
(shortened) We report the results of an investigation of particle acceleration and electron-positron plasma generation at low altitude in the polar magnetic flux tubes of Rotation Powered Pulsars, when the stellar surface is free to emit…
Since the invention of chirped pulse amplification, which was recognized by a Nobel prize in physics in 2018, there has been a continuing increase in available laser intensity. Combined with advances in our understanding of the kinetics of…
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…
A number of radio pulsars exhibit intriguing mode-switching behavior. Recent observations of PSR B0943+10 revealed correlated radio and X-ray mode switches, providing a new avenue for understanding this class of objects. The large X-ray…
It is well known that in the presence of strong external electromagnetic fields many processes forbidden in standard QED become possible. One example is the one-photon annihilation process considered recently by the present authors in the…
We study the synchrotron radiation as the observed non-thermal X-ray emission from old pulsars ($\gtrsim1-10$Myr) to investigate the particle acceleration in their magnetospheres. We assume that the power-law component of the observed X-ray…
The advent of Petawatt-class laser systems allows generating electro-magnetic fields of unprecedented strength in a controlled environment, driving increasingly more efforts to probe yet unobserved processes through their interaction with…
Rotation-powered pulsars and magnetars are two different observational manifestations of neutron stars: rotation powered pulsars are rapidly spinning objects that are mostly observed as pulsating radio sources, while magnetars, neutron…
Plasma in the earth's magnetosphere is subjected to compression during geomagnetically active periods and relaxation in subsequent quiet times. Repeated compression and relaxation is the origin of much of the plasma dynamics and…
We present a self-consistent kinetic description of an electron-positron-photon ($e^-e^+\gamma$) plasma generated from vacuum in a focal spot of counterpropagating laser pulses. We rely on a model of purely time-dependent external electric…
QED cascades are complex avalanche processes of hard photon emission and electron-positron pair creation driven by ultra-strong electromagnetic fields. They play a fundamental role in astrophysical environments such as a pulsars'…
A scheme to generate magnetized relativistic plasmas in laboratory is proposed. It is based on interaction of ultra-high-intensity sub-picosecond laser pulses with few-micron thick foils or films. By means of Particle-In-Cell simulations it…
The low-frequency instability of a magnetized plasma column and the anomalous radial plasma convection are shown to be linked with the existence of a radial cross-field current along a plasma channel rotating around the central magnetized…
Since pulsars were discovered as emitters of bright coherent radio emission more than half a century ago, the cause of the emission has remained a mystery. In this Letter we demonstrate that coherent radiation can be directly generated in…
It is known that vacuum polarization can modify the photon propagation modes in the atmospheric plasma of a strongly magnetized neutron star. A resonance occurs when the effect of vacuum polarization on the photon modes balances that of the…
Pulses from a 10 PW laser are predicted to produce large numbers of gamma-rays and electron-positron pairs on hitting a solid target. However, a pair plasma, if it accumulates in front of the target, may partially shield it from the pulse.…
Understanding the physics of rotation-powered millisecond pulsars (MSPs) presents a number of challenges compared to that of the non-recycled pulsar population. Even though their fast rotation rates can produce high spin-down power and…
Electromagnetic showers from high-energy electron beams interacting with a target are a promising path to creating pair plasmas in the laboratory. Here, we solve analytically the kinetic equations describing this process. Two regimes are…
We extend our holographic analysis of the emission of photons by a strongly coupled plasma subject to a very intense external magnetic field. We previously showed that in a particular model, any photon produced by the plasma had to be in…
A new nonlinear electromagnetic wave mode in a plasma is reported. Its existence depends on the interaction of an intense circularly polarized electromagnetic wave with a plasma, where quantum electrodynamical photon--photon scattering is…