Ioanna Arka, John G. Kirk
Pulsar winds are the ideal environment for the study of non-linear
electromagnetic waves. It is generally thought that a pulsar launches a striped
wind, a magnetohydrodynamic entropy wave, where plasma sheets carried along
with the flow separate regions of alternating magnetic field. But when the
density drops below a critical value, or equivalently for distances from the
pulsar greater than a critical radius, a strong superluminal wave can also
propagate. In this contribution we discuss the conversion of the equatorial
striped wind into a linearly polarized superluminal wave, and we argue that
this mode is important for the conversion of Poynting flux to kinetic energy
flux before the outflow reaches the termination shock.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.1667
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