An Alternative Numerical Method for the Stationary Pulsar Magnetosphere

Abstract

Stationary pulsar magnetospheres in the force-free system are governed by the pulsar equation. In 1999, Contopoulos, Kazanas, and Fendt (hereafter CKF) numerically solved the pulsar equation and obtained a pulsar magnetosphere model called the CKF solution that has both closed and open magnetic field lines. The CKF solution is a successful solution, but it contains a poloidal current sheet that flows along the last open field line. This current sheet is artificially added to make the current system closed. In this paper, we suggest an alternative method to solve the pulsar equation and construct pulsar magnetosphere models without a current sheet. In our method, the pulsar equation is decomposed into Ampere's law and the force-free condition. We numerically solve these equations simultaneously with a fixed poloidal current. As a result, we obtain a pulsar magnetosphere model without a current sheet, which is similar to the CKF solution near the neutron star and has a jet-like structure at a distance along the pole. In addition, we discuss physical properties of the model and find that the force-free condition breaks down in a vicinity of the light cylinder due to dissipation that is included implicitly in the numerical method.

15 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, change title, improve contents, accepted for publication in PASJ

References in corpus (4)

• Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamic Simulations of Neutron Star Magnetospheres
• Study of Four Young TeV Pulsar Wind Nebulae with a Spectral Evolution Model
• Jets and Disk-Winds from Pulsar Magnetospheres
• Force-free magnetosphere of an aligned rotator with differential rotation of open magnetic field lines

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• General-relativistic force-free pulsar magnetospheres
• Fast-spinning black holes inferred from symmetrically limb-brightened radio jets
• Twist-induced Magnetosphere Reconfiguration for Intermittent Pulsars
• Similarity Inner Solutions for the Pulsar Equation
• The Evolution of High Temperature Plasma in Magnetar Magnetospheres and its Implications for Giant Flares
• Resonant Excitation of Tilt Mode in Tidally Deformed Disks
• Two-fluid model of the pulsar magnetosphere represented as an axisymmetric force-free dipole