Joint Astrophysics Colloquium

Joint Astrophysics Seminar

Relativistic Outflows:
The Mystery of Pulsar Winds

Anatoly Spitkovsky

Kavli Institute
SLAC

Most of the spindown energy of rotation powered pulsars is lost in the form of a relativistic wind. Despite 35 years of research, the nature of the energy extraction and its transformation into observable radiation from pulsar wind nebulae remains elusive. In this talk I discuss how recent theoretical progress on the structure of pulsar magnetospheres, particle acceleration in relativistic shocks, and modeling of wind-nebula interaction provides constraints on the electrodynamics of the wind and its composition. I further apply these results to the recently discovered double pulsars J0737-3039. By using numerical simulations I demonstrate how the rich phenomenology of the system can be attributed to the interaction between a relativistic wind and a rotating pulsar magnetosphere. This incredible system provides a probe of the wind conditions closest to the source of the wind and allows direct study of the physics of relativistic outflows and pulsar magnetospheres.