Three-dimensional Dissipative Pulsar Magnetospheres with Aristotelian Electrodynamics

Abstract

Abstract A good compromise between the resistive model and the particle-in-cell model is Aristotelian electrodynamics, which can include the back-reaction of the radiative photons onto particle motion and allow for a local dissipation where the force-free condition is violated. We study the dissipative pulsar magnetosphere with Aristotelian electrodynamics where particle acceleration is fully balanced by radiation. The expression for the current density is defined by introducing a pair multiplicity. The 3D structure of the pulsar magnetosphere is then presented by solving the time-dependent Maxwell equations using a pseudo-spectral algorithm. It is found that the dissipative magnetosphere approaches the force-free solution and the dissipative region is more restricted to the current sheet outside the light cylinder (LC) as the pair multiplicity increases. The spatial extension of the dissipative region is self-consistently controlled by the pair multiplicity. Our simulations show the high magnetospheric dissipation outside the LC for the low pair multiplicity.