Physical Conditions in the Reconnection Layer in Pulsar Magnetospheres

Understand

The magnetosphere of a rotating pulsar naturally develops a current sheet beyond the light cylinder (LC).

• Magnetic reconnection in this current sheet inevitably dissipates a nontrivial fraction of the pulsar spin-down power within a few LC radii.
• We develop a basic physical picture of reconnection in this environment and discuss its implications for the observed pulsed gamma-ray emission.
• We argue that reconnection proceeds in the plasmoid-dominated regime, via an hierarchical chain of multiple secondary islands/flux ropes.