Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons^™

Astrophysical Mechanisms For Pulsar Spindown, Eric Addison

Eric Addison

Pulsars are astrophysical sources of pulsed electromagnetic radiation. The pulses have a variety of shapes in the time-domain, and the pulse energy generally peaks in the radio spectrum. The accepted models theorize that pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars with strong dipolar magnetic fields. Current models predict that rotational kinetic energy is extracted from the pulsar in the form of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation, causing it to slowly lose rotational speed, or “spin down”. This spindown can be characterized by a single value n, known as the braking index. This report will review basic characteristics of pulsars, including short treatments …