Pulsar Magnetosphere : A General Relativistic Treatment

A fully general relativistic description of the pulsar magnetosphere is provided. To be more concrete, a study of the pulsar magnetosphere is performed in the context of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) employing the so-called Grad-Shafranov approach. Not surprisingly, the resulting Grad-Shafranov equations and all the other related general relativistic MHD equations turn out to take essentially the same structures as those for the (rotating) black hole magnetosphere. Other different natures between the two cases including the structure of singular surfaces of MHD flows in each magnetosphere are essentially encoded in the different spacetime (metric) contents. In this way, the pulsar and the black hole magnetospheres can be described in an unified fashion. Particularly, the direction of poloidal currents circulating in the neutron star magnetosphere turns out to be the same as that of currents circulating in the black hole magnetosphere which, in turn, leads to the pulsar and the black hole spin-downs via the ``magnetic braking''.Comment: 42 pages, 3 figures, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.(MNRAS), in pres

Spacetime structure of 5D hypercylindrical vacuum solutions with tension

We investigate geometrical properties of 5D cylindrical vacuum solutions with a transverse spherical symmetry. The metric is uniform along the fifth direction and characterized by tension and mass densities. The solutions are classified by the tension-to-mass ratio. One particular example is the well-known Schwarzschild black string which has a curvature singularity enclosed by a horizon. We focus mainly on geometry of other solutions which possess a naked singularity. The light signal emitted by an object approaching the singularity reaches a distant observer with finite time, but is infinitely red-shifted.Comment: revtex4, 5 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the 10th Asia Pacific Physics Conference (APPC10), Pohang, Korea, 21-24 Aug. 2007. Submitted to J. Korean Phys. Soc. Penrose diagram has been adde

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation anisotropy with primordial magnetic fields

Galactic magnetic fields are observed of order $\sim 10^{-6}G$, but their origin is not definitely known yet. In this paper we consider the primordial magnetic fields generated in the early universe and analyse their effects on the density perturbations and the CMBR anisotropy. We assume that the random magnetic fields have the power law spectrum and satisfy the force-free field condition. The peak heights of the CMBR anisotropy are shown to be shifted upward depending on the magnetic field strengths relative to the no-magnetic field case.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Instanton solutions mediating tunneling between the degenerate vacua in curved space

We investigate the instanton solution between the degenerate vacua in curved space. We show that there exist $O(4)$-symmetric solutions not only in de Sitter but also in both flat and anti-de Sitter space. The geometry of the new type of solutions is finite and preserves the $Z_2$ symmetry. The nontrivial solution corresponding to the tunneling is possible only if gravity is taken into account. The numerical solutions as well as the analytic computations using the thin-wall approximation are presented. We expect that these solutions do not have any negative mode as in the instanton solution.Comment: Some typos are corrected and references are added with respect to the published version. 17pages, 11fi