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Singularities in a Relativistic Pulsar Wind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Jianke Li
Jianke Li*
Affiliation:
ANU Astrophysical Theory Centre, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science & the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, Australian National University, ACT 0200, Australia
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Abstract

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The nature of a singularity in a cool, gravitation-free axisymmetrical, relativistic, steady pulsar wind is further investigated, in line with the recent counter-argument of Ardavan (1995, hereafter A95) that the pure Alfvén ‘singularity’ has an equal importance to the Alfvén singularity if one defines the singularity via a quadratic form rather than using the ratio as adopted by Li & Melrose (1994). The pure Alfvénic point in A95 coincides with the proposed characteristic point through which a continuous wind will meet the star and infinity. However, we find that the critical point as implied in the quadratic form is in fact the intermediate point (Ardavan 1979), but not the pure Alfvénic point. Thus the analysis of A95 does not indicate any significance of the pure Alfvénic point. We also demonstrate that the intermediate point which appears in the quadratic form of A95 is not genuine.

Keywords

Magnetohydrodynamicspulsars: generalstars: magnetic fields
Type
Research Article
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , 1998 , pp. 328 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 1998

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