PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 275 - 4th Annual Conference on High Energy Astrophysics in Southern Africa (HEASA 2016) - Pulsars and Pulsar Wind Nebulae (Chair: P Meintjes)
New Advances in the Modelling of Pulsar Magnetospheres
C. Venter
Full text: pdf
Published on: June 23, 2017
Abstract
The wealth of high-energy (E > 50 MeV) and very-high-energy (E > 100 GeV) data accumulated over the past few years have provided unprecedented opportunities to probe pulsar emission models. The Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has now detected over 200 gamma-ray pulsars of vastly different ages, providing an extensive dataset of spectra and light curves compared to a mere decade ago. Ground-based Cherenkov telescopes deepened our appreciation of the mysterious richness of the pulsar mechanism by a surprise detection of pulsed emission up to 1 TeV from the Crab pulsar. These discoveries position us to make real progress in pulsar theory. A number of studies have developed new and enhanced existing dissipative magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) and particle-in-cell (PIC) codes to solve the global electrodynamics and pursue fundamental questions about magnetospheric particle injection, acceleration, and radiation. While MHD models capture the global aspects of pulsar magnetospheres, the microphysics need to be probed self-consistently by PIC simulations. Some dissipative MHD models consider the current sheet (CS) as an important site for high-energy curvature radiation (CR), while early PIC results point to energy dissipation taking place in the CS, where particles are accelerated by magnetic reconnection and may possibly emit $\gamma$ rays via synchrotron radiation (SR). This is in marked contrast to some older local emission models that studied CR $\gamma$ rays produced in gaps nearer to the spinning neutron star. The universality of these results should become clearer as current computational restrictions are overcome and boundary conditions are refined. Continued and combined polarimetric, spectral, and temporal measurements should aid us in scrutinising these new emission models in our persistent pursuit of a deeper understanding of the pulsar marvel.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.275.0040
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.