Related papers: Reconnection in a striped pulsar wind
Successful phenomenological models of pulsar wind nebulae assume efficient dissipation of the Poynting flux of the magnetized electron-positron wind as well as efficient acceleration of the pairs in the vicinity of the termination shock,…
We analyze particle acceleration in explosive reconnection events in magnetically dominated proton-electron plasmas. Reconnection is driven by large-scale magnetic stresses in interacting current-carrying flux tubes. Our model relies on…
It is believed that an isolated pulsar loses its rotational energy mainly through a relativistic wind consisting of electrons, positrons and possibly Poynting flux\cite{Pacini1973,Rees1974,Kennel1984}. As it expands, this wind may…
The Stokes parameters of the pulsed synchrotron radiation produced in the striped pulsar wind model are computed and compared with optical observations of the Crab pulsar. We assume the main contribution to the wind emissivity comes from a…
The Crab Nebula demonstrates that neutron stars can interact with their environments in spectacular fashion, their relativistic winds generating nebulae observable across the electromagnetic spectrum. At many previous conferences,…
Rotating neutron stars, or pulsars, are plausibly the source of power behind many astrophysical systems, such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants. In the past several years, 3D numerical simulations…
A typical young pulsar slows down at an imperceptible rate, its spin period increasing by less than 10 microseconds over the course of a year. However, the inertia of a pulsar is so extreme that to effect this tiny change in rotation rate,…
Reconnection and turbulence are two of the most commonly observed dynamical processes in plasmas, but their relationship is still not fully understood. Using 2.5D kinetic particle-in-cell simulations of both strong turbulence and…
Magnetic reconnection at the interface between coronal holes and loops, so-called interchange reconnection, can release the hotter, denser plasma from magnetically confined regions into the heliosphere, contributing to the formation of the…
Convection inside the magnetosphere can be regarded as the transfer of magnetic flux and plasma from the magnetotail into the nightside and then convection and drift from there to the dayside. As in many fluid flow situations, the…
The unusually short durations, high luminosities, and high photon energies of the Crab Nebula gamma-ray flares require relativistic bulk motion of the emitting plasma. We explain the Crab flares as the result of randomly oriented…
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process in various astrophysical, space, and laboratory environments. Many pieces of evidence for magnetic reconnection have been uncovered. However, its specific processes that could be…
Unconfined relativistic outflows from rotating, magnetized compact objects are often well-modeled by assuming the field geometry is approximately a split-monopole at large radii. Earlier work has indicated that such an unconfined flow has…
The radiation of a pulsar wind is computed assuming that at roughly 10 to 100 light cylinder radii from the star, magnetic energy is dissipated into particle energy. The synchrotron emission of heated particles appears periodic, with, in…
The presence of a companion wind in neutron star binary systems can form a contact discontinuity well within the pulsar's light cylinder, effectively creating a waveguide that confines the pulsar's electromagnetic fields and significantly…
As is well known, pulsars are extremely stable rotators. However, although slowly, they spin down thanks to brake mechanisms, which are in fact still subject of intense investigation in the literature. Since pulsars are usually modelled as…
We investigate the emission of rotating magnetized neutron stars due to the acceleration and radiation of particles in the relativistic wind and in the magnetotail of the star. We consider that the charged particles are accelerated by…
The population of gamma-ray pulsars, including Crab observed in the TeV range, and Vela detected above 50 GeV, challenges existing models of pulsed high-energy emission. Such models should be universally applicable, yet they should account…
Using the exact solution of the axisymmetric pulsar magnetosphere derived in a previous publication and the conservation laws of the associated MHD flow, we show that the Lorentz factor of the outflowing plasma increases linearly with…
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…