Instability of the Goldreich-Julian Model for a Pulsar Magnetosphere

Thacker, P. D., Michel, F. C., and Smith, I. A.

We present numerical simulations of pulsar magnetospheres in which the spin and magnetic dipole axes of the neutron star are aligned. We thereby demonstrate the existence of stable charge distributions that include vacuum gaps. We also demonstrate that the charge distribution used in the ``standard'' Goldreich-Julian pulsar model is inherently unstable. It collapses to a stable configuration that is very similar to the others illustrated in this paper.

Status: 1998, RevMexAA (Serie de Conferencias), 7, 211. Final version available.

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