Radio pulsars: already fifty years!

TL;DR

This review summarizes fifty years of research on radio pulsars, highlighting unresolved fundamental questions about their emission mechanisms and magnetospheric physics despite significant progress.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical results and outlines key unanswered questions in pulsar magnetosphere research.

Findings

Progress in understanding pulsar properties

No consensus on emission mechanisms

Identification of fundamental unresolved questions

Abstract

Although fifty years have passed since the discovery of radio pulsars, there is still no satisfactory understanding of how these amazing objects operate. While there has been significant progress in understanding the basic properties of radio pulsars, there is as yet no consensus on key issues, such as the nature of coherent radio emission or the conversion mechanism of the electromagnetic energy of the pulsar wind into particle energy. In this review, we present the main theoretical results on the magnetosphere of neutron stars. We formulate a number of apparently simple questions, which nevertheless remain unanswered since the very beginning of the field and which must be resolved before any further progress can be made.