UNC PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM
Demos Kazanas, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA
“The structure of realistic pulsar magnetospheres”
I will present the magnetic and electric field structures and the currents and charge densities of pulsar magnetospheres that do not obey the ideal condition, E * B = 0. Since the acceleration of particles and the production of radiation require the presence of an electric field component parallel to the magnetic field, E||, the structure of non-ideal pulsar magnetospheres is intimately related to the production of pulsar radiation. Therefore, knowledge of the structure of non-ideal pulsar magnetospheres is important because their comparison (including models for the production of radiation) with observations will delineate the physics and the parameters underlying the pulsar radiation problem. I will present models and properties of non-ideal pulsar magnetospheres as well as models of the resulting gamma ray light curves and their relation to the Fermi observations.