Three-dimensional dissipative pulsar magnetospheres with Aristotelian electrodynamics

TL;DR

This paper models three-dimensional pulsar magnetospheres using Aristotelian electrodynamics, revealing how dissipation regions depend on pair multiplicity and approach force-free solutions, with significant dissipation outside the light-cylinder at low pair multiplicity.

Contribution

It introduces a 3D dissipative pulsar magnetosphere model with Aristotelian electrodynamics, incorporating pair multiplicity to self-consistently determine dissipation regions.

Findings

Dissipative regions are confined near the current sheet outside the light-cylinder as pair multiplicity increases.

The magnetosphere approaches force-free solutions with higher pair multiplicity.

High dissipation occurs outside the light-cylinder at low pair multiplicity.

Abstract

A good compromise between the resistive model and the PIC model is Aristotelian electrodynamics, which can include the back-reaction of the radiative photons onto particle motion and allow for a local dissipation where the force-free condition is violated. We study the dissipative pulsar magnetosphere with Aristotelian electrodynamics where particle acceleration is fully balanced by radiation. The expression for the current density is defined by introducing a pair multiplicity. The 3D structure of the pulsar magnetosphere is then presented by solving the time-dependent Maxwell equations using a pseudo-spectral algorithm. It is found that the dissipative magnetosphere approaches the force-free solution and the dissipative region is more restricted to the current sheet outside the light-cylinder (LC) as the pair multiplicity increases. The spatial extension of the dissipative region is self-consistently controlled by the pair multiplicity. Our simulations show the high magnetospheric dissipation outside the LC for the low pair multiplicity.