Special Astrophysics Seminar

The Crab Nebula: The Inner Knot and flares

Maxim Lyutikov

Purdue University

We can probe observationally and reproduce theoretically the most detailed properties of the Crab Nebula nearest to the pulsar- The Inner Knot. The tiny knot is indeed a bright spot on the surface of a quasi-stationary magnetic relativistic shock that efficiently accelerates particles.

We develop a model of particle acceleration during explosive reconnection events in relativistic highly magnetized plasma and apply the model to explain the Crab gamma-ray flares. We argue that magnetic reconnection is an important, and possibly dominant process of particle acceleration in high energy astrophysical sources.