Are there two types of pulsars?

Abstract

In order to investigate the importance of dissipation in the pulsar magnetosphere we decided to combine Force-Free with Aristotelian Electrodynamics. We obtain solutions that are ideal (non-dissipative) everywhere except in an equatorial current sheet where Poynting flux from both hemispheres converges and is dissipated into particle acceleration and radiation. We find significant dissipative losses (up to about 50% of the pulsar spindown luminosity), similar to what is found in global PIC simulations in which particles are provided only on the stellar surface. We conclude that there might indeed exist two types of pulsars, strongly dissipative ones with particle injection only from the stellar surface, and ideal (weakly dissipative) ones with particle injection in the outer magnetosphere and in particular at the Y-point.

arXiv comment5 pages, 1 figure, Monthly Notices Letters

References in corpus (16)

• Time-dependent force-free pulsar magnetospheres: axisymmetric and oblique rotators
• The Axisymmetric Pulsar Magnetosphere
• Resistive Solutions for Pulsar Magnetospheres
• Simulations of Axisymmetric Magnetospheres of Neutron Stars
• Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of oblique pulsars
• Modeling high-energy pulsar lightcurves from first principles
• Particle acceleration in axisymmetric pulsar current sheets
• Electrodynamics of axisymmetric pulsar magnetosphere with electron-positron discharge: a numerical experiment
• Three-dimensional numerical simulations of the pulsar magentoshere: Preliminary results
• Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of axisymmetric pulsars
• Gamma-Ray Emission in Dissipative Pulsar Magnetospheres: From Theory to Fermi Observations
• Physical Conditions in the Reconnection Layer in Pulsar Magnetospheres
• Gamma-Ray Light Curves from Pulsar Magnetospheres with Finite Conductivity
• A new standard pulsar magnetosphere
• Dissipative Pulsar Magnetosphere
• The Equatorial Current Sheet and other interesting features of the Pulsar Magnetosphere

Cited by in corpus (8)

• 3D Kinetic Pulsar Magnetosphere Models: Connecting to Gamma-Ray Observations
• Theory of pulsar magnetosphere and wind
• Electron positron pair flow and current composition in the pulsar magnetosphere
• Three-dimensional dissipative pulsar magnetospheres with Aristotelian electrodynamics
• Radiative pulsar magnetospheres: aligned rotator
• Radiative pulsar magnetospheres: oblique rotators
• The Crab pulsar at VHE
• The pulsar gamma-ray emission from the high-resolution dissipative magnetospheres