Related papers: The Coughing Pulsar Magnetosphere
The activity of magnetars is believed to be powered by colossal magnetic energy reservoirs. We sketch an evolutionary picture in which internal field evolution in magnetars generates a twisted corona, form which energy may be released…
When time-reversal symmetry is broken on its surface, topological insulators exhibit a magnetoelectric response which is described by axion electrodynamics. A direct consequence of this theory is the appearance of a magnetic field that…
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 argue that existing models of the ideal pulsar magnetosphere are incorrect because of the improper treatment of the singular current layer outside the light cylinder. We simulated the axisymmetric pulsar magnetosphere in the Force-Free…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of radiative transfer in magnetar atmospheres. We include the effects of vacuum polarization, electron and proton scattering, and free-free absorption. Simulations are performed for the atmosphere model…
Magnetospheres of neutron stars are anchored in the rigid crust and can be twisted by sudden crustal motions ("starquakes"). The twisted magnetosphere does not remain static and gradually untwists, dissipating magnetic energy and producing…
Pulsar magnetospheres have strong magnetic fields and large amounts of plasma. The structures of these magnetospheres are studied using force-free electrodynamics. To understand pulsar magnetospheres, discussions must include their outer…
The origin of pulsar radio emission is one of the old puzzles in theoretical astrophysics. In this Letter we present a global kinetic plasma simulation which shows from first-principles how and where radio emission can be produced in pulsar…
The cohesive energy of condensed matter in strong magnetic fields is a fundamental quantity characterizing magnetized neutron star surfaces. The cohesive energy refers to the energy required to pull an atom out of the bulk condensed matter…
Extremely strong magnetic fields change the vacuum index of refraction. Although this polarization dependent effect is small for typical neutron stars, it is large enough to decouple the polarization states of photons traveling within the…
We speculate that stationary force-free pulsar magnetospheres are screw unstable, and the spin-down power of real pulsars is carried by turbulent Poynting jets. The turbulent jet entrains poloidal flux as it propagates away from the star.…
It is suggested in this paper that the `bare' strange star might be not bare, and there could be a magnetosphere around it. As a strange star might be an intensely magnetized rotator, the induced unipolar electric field would be large…
We consider magnetospheric structure of rotating neutron stars with internally twisted axisymmetric magnetic fields. The twist-induced and rotation-induced toroidal magnetic fields align/counter-align in different hemispheres. Using…
Recent advances in numerical algorithms and computational power have enabled first-principles simulations of pulsar magnetospheres using Particle-in-Cell (PIC) techniques. These ab-initio simulations seem to indicate that pair creation…
Motivated by stability considerations and observational evidence, we argue that magnetars possess highly-tangled internal magnetic fields. We propose that the quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) seen to accompany giant flares can be…
Most studies of the pulsar magnetosphere have assumed a pure magnetic dipole in flat spacetime. However, recent work suggests that the effects of general relativity are in fact of vital importance and that realistic pulsar magnetic fields…
Bright outbursts from Soft Gamma Repeaters (SGRs) and Anomalous X-ray Pulsars (AXPs) are believed to be caused by instabilities in ultramagnetized neutron stars, powered by a decaying magnetic field. It was originally thought that these…
We describe XMM-Newton observations taken 4.3 days prior to and 1.5 days subsequent to two remarkable events that were detected with Swift on 2006 September 21 from the candidate magnetar CXOU J164710.2-455216: (1) a 20 ms burst with an…
The non-dissipative relativistic force-free condition should be a good approximation to describe the electromagnetic field in much of the pulsar magnetosphere, but we may plausibly expect it to break down in singular domains.…
We present, for the first time, the structure of the axisymmetric force-free magnetosphere of an aligned rotating magnetic dipole, in the case in which there exists a sufficiently large charge density (whose origin we do not question) to…