Paper detail

Are there two types of pulsars?

In order to investigate the importance of dissipation in the pulsar magnetosphere we decided to combine Force-Free with Aristotelian Electrodynamics. We obtain solutions that are ideal (non-dissipative) everywhere except in an equatorial current sheet where Poynting flux from both hemispheres converges and is dissipated into particle acceleration and radiation. We find significant dissipative losses (up to about 50% of the pulsar spindown luminosity), similar to what is found in global PIC simulations in which particles are provided only on the stellar surface. We conclude that there might indeed exist two types of pulsars, strongly dissipative ones with particle injection only from the stellar surface, and ideal (weakly dissipative) ones with particle injection in the outer magnetosphere and in particular at the Y-point.