Related papers: The termination shock in a striped pulsar wind
The relativistic wind of obliquely-rotating pulsars consists of toroidal stripes of opposite magnetic field polarity, separated by current sheets of hot plasma. By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we…
Most of the rotational luminosity of a pulsar is carried away by a relativistic magnetised wind in which the matter energy flux is negligible compared to the Poynting flux. Near the equatorial plane of an obliquely rotating pulsar…
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…
By means of two- and three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we investigate the process of driven magnetic reconnection at the termination shock of relativistic striped flows. In pulsar winds and in magnetar-powered relativistic…
The termination shock of a pulsar wind is located roughly where the ram pressure matches that of the surrounding medium. Downstream of the shock, MHD models of the diffuse nebular emission suggest the plasma is weakly magnetized. However,…
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…
It is generally thought that most of the spin-down power of a pulsar is carried away in an MHD wind dominated by Poynting flux. In the case of an oblique rotator, a significant part of this energy can be considered to be in a low-frequency…
Unpulsed, high-energy emission from pulsar binaries can be attributed to the interaction of a pulsar wind with that of a companion star. At the shock between the outflows, particles carried away from the pulsar magnetosphere are accelerated…
Pulsar winds are the ideal environment for the study of non-linear electromagnetic waves. It is generally thought that a pulsar launches a striped wind, a magnetohydrodynamic entropy wave, where plasma sheets carried along with the flow…
An oblique-rotating pulsar generates a relativistic striped wind in a pulsar wind nebula (PWN). The termination shock of the PWN compresses the Poynting-flux-dominated flow and drives magnetic reconnection. By carrying out particle-in-cell…
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,…
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…
We study the acceleration of electrons and positrons at an electromagnetically modified, ultra-relativistic shock in the context of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). We simulate the outflow produced by an obliquely rotating pulsar in proximity of…
In this letter we report on turbulent acceleration of the dissipation of magnetic field in the postshock re- gion of a Poynting flux-dominated flow, such as the Crab pulsar wind nebula. We have performed two- dimensional resistive…
Winds are ubiquitous in galaxies and often feature bubble structures. These wind bubbles are characterized by an external forward shock expanding in the surrounding medium and a wind termination shock separating the cool and fast wind from…
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…
The theory of diffusive acceleration of energetic particles at shock fronts assumes charged particles undergo spatial diffusion in a uniform magnetic field. If, however, the magnetic field is not uniform, but has a stochastic or braided…
A shock wave propagating perpendicularly to an ambient magnetic field accelerates particles considerably faster than in the parallel propagation regime. However, the perpendicular acceleration stops after the shock overruns a circular…
We review current theoretical ideas on pulsar winds and their surrounding nebulae. Relativistic MHD models of the wind of the aligned rotator, and of the striped wind, together with models of magnetic dissipation are discussed. It is shown…
We investigate the acceleration of charged particles (both electrons and protons) at collisionless shocks predicted to exist in the vicinity of solar flares. The existence of standing termination shocks has been examined by flare models and…