Radio Pulsars

Almost 50 years after radio pulsars were discovered in 1967, our understanding of these objects remains incomplete. On the one hand, within a few years it became clear that neutron star rotation gives rise to the extremely stable sequence of radio pulses, that the kinetic energy of rotation provides the reservoir of energy, and that electromagnetic fields are the braking mechanism. On the other hand, no consensus regarding the mechanism of coherent radio emission or the conversion of electromagnetic energy to particle energy yet exists. In this review, we report on three aspects of pulsar structure that have seen recent progress: the self-consistent theory of the magnetosphere of an oblique magnetic rotator; the location, geometry, and optics of radio emission; and evolution of the angle between spin and magnetic axes. These allow us to take the next step in understanding the physical nature of the pulsar activity.

Dynamical tides excited in rotating stars of different masses and ages and the formation of close in orbits

We study the tidal response of rotating solar mass stars, as well as more massive rotating stars, of different ages in the context of tidal captures leading to either giant exoplanets on close in orbits, or the formation of binary systems in star clusters. To do this, we adopt approaches based on normal mode and associated overlap integral evaluation, developed in a companion paper by Ivanov et al., and direct numerical simulation, to evaluate energy and angular momentum exchanges between the orbit and normal modes. The two approaches are found to be in essential agreement apart from when encounters occur near to pseudosynchronization, where the stellar angular velocity and the orbital angular velocity at periastron are approximately matched. We find that the strength of tidal interaction being expressed in dimensionless natural units is significantly weaker for the more massive stars, as compared to the solar mass stars, because of the lack of significant convective regions in the former case. On the other hand the interaction is found to be stronger for retrograde as opposed to prograde orbits in all cases. In addition, for a given pericentre distance, tidal interactions also strengthen for more evolved stars on account of their radial expansion. In agreement with previous work based on simplified polytropic models, we find that energy transferred to their central stars could play a significant role in the early stages of the circularisation of potential Hot Jupiters.