Séminaire / Seminar GReCO |
| « Pulsar winds and magnetospheres: emission, acceleration and magnetic reconnection » |
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Jérôme Pétri |
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Neutron stars are end products of stellar evolution. Within the last few years, compact object astrophysics has greatly benefited from terrestrial based and space telescopes. However, these compact stars remain badly understood. Among those stars, pulsars form a peculiar class, which emission remain enigmatic although discovered more than 40 years ago. In this talk, in the first part, I will briefly review some problems related to our understanding of pulsars and then focus on their magnetosphere and wind. In a second part, I will explain how it is possible to diagnose the magnetic field structure and plasma configuration within the magnetosphere thanks to observational data from radio polarization up to high-energy emission. In a last part, I show that farther away from the neutron star, its magnetised wind can be subject to magnetic reconnection in the relativistic regime when crossing the termination shock. Reconnection is studied via 1D relativistic PIC simulations. This opens up a new way to solve the problem of magnetic energy conversion into kinetic energy for the particles feeding the surrounding nebula.
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lundi 17 juin 2013 - 11:00 Salle des séminaires François Arago Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris |
| Pages web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage |