2016/06/30 by Ioannis Contopoulos
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Acceleration #Astrophysics #Classical mechanics #Dissipation #Dissipative system #Earthquake Detection and Analysis #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Luminosity #Magnetic field #Magnetohydrodynamics #Magnetosphere #Particle acceleration #Physics #Poynting vector #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slw166
5 pages, 1 figure, Monthly Notices Letters
openalex publication_date 2016/07/01 · arxiv created 2016/08/01 · arxiv updated 2016/09/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 per cent of the pulsar spin-down luminosity), similar to what is found in global Particle-In-Cell 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.