There's a spider on the Crab pulsar ! ;-)

[Cham]

I'm revisiting an old friend : PSR J0534+2200 AKA the Crab pulsar. I already made a magnetic field model a "long" time ago (relativistic dipole tilted at 90°). I decided to add a model of the Poynting field and a typical trapped proton trajectory around the pulsar. Well, I didn't expected the shape (spider like) :

spider.jpg

Assuming a 1.4 Sol mass for the pulsar, gravity has the last word on the magnetic force acting on the proton :

paf.jpg

This trajectory takes into account all special relativistic effects, centrifugal and Coriolis effects (path defined in the rotating frame), gravitation (to first order), exact relativistic magnetic field from a fast rotating dipole (same parameters as for the Crab pulsar), induced electric field, etc.

It may be interesting to define a layer to show the trajectory modifications from the various components, switching OFF each term separately (centrifugal effect, induced electric field, etc...).

Here's "half" the Poynting field ([tex]\vec{\bold E}\times \vec{\bold B}[/tex]) (there's a 180° symmetry which I'm not showing, because of the lines mess) :

poynting.jpg

Of course, the Poynting curves are radial, at large distance (as expected).


The emissive cylinder represents the "light cylinder" familiar to any pulsar specialist.

[Cham]

Selden,

please, jump this topic into the Physics forum. Nobody is actually interested in this addon, so it's better placed under the physics thread.

[selden]

Cham,

I'm going to leave this thread in the Addons Forum: Addons are not physics, even when a great deal of physics has gone into their design. Many popular Addons get no discussion but do get quite a few downloads.

If you want to discuss the physics involved in how relativistic electrons interact with planetary magnetospheres, please do start a thread in the P&A forum.