Electrodynamics of pulsars

Classical Electrodynamics

Kinematics of Radio Pulsars

A very good fraction of stars in the sky are believed to be in binary (or multiple) systems. Therefore, we expect a good fraction of pulsars to have originated in binary systems. However, observations of pulsars have shown that most of the pulsars are not in binary system now. This would imply that these pulsars must have become solitary after the disruption of their progenitor binary system du...

Extreme scattering of pulsars

Extreme Scattering Events are radio-wave lensing events caused by AU-sized concentrations of ionised gas. Although they were discovered more than a decade ago we still have no clear picture of the physical nature of the lenses. To discriminate between the various models, we need to amass more information on multiple imaging phenomena. Pulsars are perfect targets for such studies: they offer six...

EGRET Observations of Pulsars

EGRET can now study six pulsars since the recent detection of PSR B1951+32. Careful analysis of the three brightest pulsars shows that gamma rays are emitted through essentially the entire rotation. This calls into question the previous interpretation of the Crab’s lowlevel emission as due entirely to its nebula. The pulse light curves have either well-separated double peaks or very broad peaks...

Electrodynamics of Radiating Charges

The theory of electrodynamics of radiating charges is reviewed with special emphasis on the role of the Schott energy for the conservation of energy for a charge and its electromagnetic field. It is made clear that the existence of radiation from a charge is not invariant against a transformation between two reference frames that has an accelerated motion relative to each other. The questions w...