Related papers: Dissipation in Pulsar Winds
We study particle acceleration at the termination shock of a striped pulsar wind by integrating trajectories in a prescribed model of the magnetic field and flow pattern. Drift motion on the shock surface maintains either electrons or…
Aims. We use the IBIS/ISGRI telescope on-board INTEGRAL to measure the position of the centroid of the 20-200 keV emission from the Crab region. Methods. We find that the astrometry of the IBIS telescope is affected by the temperature of…
The large-scale structure of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) tells us a considerable amount about their average magnetic fields, the total particle input from the pulsar winds, and the confining pressure at their outer boundaries. However, the…
The decades-long explorations on the dispersal of protoplanetary disks involve many debates about photoevaporation versus magnetized wind launching mechanisms. This letter argues that the observed winds originating from the inner disk…
Young pulsars spin incredibly quickly, but are also slowing down at a very rapid rate. This process carries away enormous amounts of energy from the star in the form of a relativistic wind. Through the high resolution now offered by the…
Planet-forming discs in sufficiently strong UV environments lose gas in external photoevaporative winds. Dust can also be entrained within these winds, which has consequences for the possible solids reservoir for planet formation, and…
A solution to the sigma problem - that of finding a mechanism capable of converting Poynting energy flux to particle-borne energy flux in a pulsar wind - was proposed several years ago by Coroniti and Michel who considered a particular…
We present XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray observations of the middle-aged radio pulsar PSR B0355+54. Our X-ray observations reveal emission not only from the pulsar itself, but also from a compact diffuse component extending ~50'' in the…
In separate series of observations of the Crab pulsar, pulse broadening due to scattering was measured at 111 MHz, and variations of dispersion due to pulse delay were measured at higher radio frequencies. In a remarkable event lasting 200…
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…
For pulsars similar to the one in the Crab Nebula, most of the energy input to the surrounding wind nebula occurs on a timescale of less than 1000 years; during this time, the nebula expands into freely expanding supernova ejecta. On a…
Our understanding of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe), has greatly improved in the last years thanks to unprecedented high resolution images taken from the HUBBLE, CHANDRA and XMM satellites. The discovery of complex but similar inner features,…
The Crab nebula and its pulsar (referred to together as "Crab") have historically played a central role in astrophysics. True to their legacy, several unique discoveries have been made recently. The Crab was found to emit gamma-ray…
Winds arising from galaxies, star clusters, and active galactic nuclei are crucial players in star and galaxy formation, but it has proven remarkably difficult to use observations of them to determine physical properties of interest,…
We have investigated the relaxation of a hydrostatic hot plasma column containing toroidal magnetic field by the Current-Driven (CD) kink instability as a model of pulsar wind nebulae. In our simulations the CD kink instability is excited…
I outline, from a theoretical and somewhat personal perspective, significant features of Pulsar Wind Nebulae as Cosmic Accelerators. I discuss recent studies of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe). I pay special attention to the recently discovered…
We consider magnetohydrodynamical interaction between relativistic pulsar wind and static magnetosphere in binary pulsar system PSR J0737-3039. We construct semi-analytical model describing the form of the interface separating the two…
We investigate the motion of the primary beam outside the light cylinder in the pulsar wind. Inside the light cylinder both primary and secondary plasma move along dipole magnetic field lines where their energies can be arbitrary. But at…
We have detected weak soft X-ray emission from the Pulsar Wind Nebula trailing the high velocity star PSR 2224+65 (the `Guitar Nebula'). This X-ray flux gives evidence of \gamma~10^7 eV particles in the pulsar wind and constrains the…
The energy lost by a rotation-powered pulsar is carried by a relativistic flow containing a mixture of electromagnetic fields and particles. In the inner regions, this is thought to be a magnetically dominated, cold, electron-positron wind…