Electrodynamics of pulsar electrospheres Available to Purchase

We present a self‐consistent model of the magnetosphere of inactive, charged, aligned rotator pulsars. The only free parameter is the total charge of the system. This “electrosphere” is stable to vacuum breakdown by electron‐positron pair production. However, it appears to be unstable to the so‐called “diocotron” and “magnetron” instabilities. The evolution of this instability on a long time‐scale is studied in a fully non‐linear description by means of numerical simulations. For multimode excitation, the average macroscopic response of the system can be described by a quasi‐linear model. In the presence of an external source feeding the disk with positive charges, representing the effect of pair creation activity in the gaps, the diocotron instability may give rise to an efficient diffusion of charged particles across the magnetic field lines.