Magnetic reconnection at the termination shock in a striped pulsar wind

Abstract

Context.Most of the rotational luminosity of a pulsar is carried away by a relativistic magnetised wind in which the matter energy flux is negligible compared to the Poynting flux. However, observations of the Crab nebula for instance clearly indicate that most of the Poynting flux is eventually converted into ultra-relativistic particles. The mechanism responsible for transformation of the electro-magnetic energy into the particle energy remains poorly understood. Near the equatorial plane of an obliquely rotating pulsar magnetosphere, the magnetic field reverses polarity with the pulsar period, forming a wind with oppositely directed field lines. This structure is called a striped wind; dissipation of alternating fields in the striped wind is the object of our study.