Abstract
The Crab nebula is regarded as one of the most important “cosmic laboratories” in astrophysics, which has made a bigger impact on the development of astronomy than any other single object beyond the solar system. The most intriguing recent result is the completely unexpected discovery of a peculiar “jet-torus” structure in the inner part of the nebula. Similar structures were found later in other Crab-like nebulae. This discovery clearly indicates significant anisotropy of the wind from the Crab pulsar which has been ignored so far in simplified theoretical models of the nebula. Fortunately, the impressive progress in computational relativistic magnetohydrodynamics in recent years has made possible to study the Crab nebula without making such a drastic simplification of the problem. In this paper we present the results of the first study of such kind. They provide a likely explanation of the jet-torus pattern and show that the flow in the nebula is much more complex than it has been widely believed.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Beskin, V.S., Kuznetsova, I.V. and Rafikov, R.R.: 1988, MNRAS 299, 341.
Bogovalov, S.V. and Tsinganos, K.: 1999, MNRAS 305, 211.
Bogovalov, S.V.: 1999, A&A 349, 101.
Bogovalov, S.V. and Khangoulyan, D.V.: 2002, MNRAS 336, L53.
Begelman, M.C.: 1998, ApJ 493, 291.
Chiueh, T., Li, Z.-Y. and Begelman, M.C.: 1988, ApJ 505, 835.
Gaensler, B.M., Arons, J., Kaspi, V.M., Pivovaroff, M.J., Kawai, N. and Tamura, K.: 2002, ApJ 569, 878.
Helfand, D.J., Gotthelf, E.V. and Halpern, J.P.: 2001, ApJ 556, 380.
Hester J.J., Scowen, P.A., Saukrit, R. and 18 co-authors: 1995, ApJ 448, 240.
Hester J.J., Mori, K., Burrows, D. and 5 co-authors: 2002, ApJ 577, L49.
Kennel, C.F. and Coroniti, F.V.: 1984, ApJ 283, 694.
Kirk, J.G. and Skjæraasen, O.: 2003, ApJ 591, 366.
Komissarov, S.S.: 1999, MNRAS 308, 1069.
Komissarov, S.S. and Lyubarsky, Y.E.: 2003, MNRAS 344, L93.
Komissarov, S.S. and Lyubarsky, Y.E.: 2004, MNRAS 349, 779.
Lyubarsky, Y.E.: 2002, MNRAS 329, L34.
Lyubarsky, Y.E.: 2003, MNRAS 345, 153.
Lyubarsky, Y.E. and Eichler, D.: 2001, ApJ 562, 494.
Michel, F.C.: 1991, Theory of Neutron Star Magnetospheres, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Pavlov, G.G., Zavlin, V.E., Sanwal, D., Burwitz, V. and Garmire, G.P.: 2001, ApJ 552, L129.
Rees, M.J. and Gunn, J.E.: 1974, MNRAS 167, 1.
Scargle, J.D.: 1969, ApJ 156, 401.
Weisskopf, M.C., Hester, J.J., Tennant, A.F. and 8 co-authors: 2000, ApJ 536, L81.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Komissarov, S., Lyubarsky, Y. (2004). MHD Simulations of Crab’s Jet and Torus. In: Massaglia, S., Bodo, G., Rossi, P. (eds) Virtual Astrophysical Jets. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2664-5_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2664-5_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5856-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-2664-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive