Topic: Chiral anomalous effects in magnetars

Speaker: Prof. Igor Shovkovy

Coordinates: PCFT C1124, 16:00, Friday, June 21

Abstract: Magnetospheres of pulsars are made of a relativistic plasma with approximately force-free configurations of electromagnetic fields. As the pulsar rotates, the magnetic field flux tubes wind up and cause stress in the plasma. It leads to the intermittent formation of the gap (vacuum) regions at various places in the magnetosphere. In the gaps, electromagnetic fields activate the chiral quantum anomaly and produce a substantial local chiral charge density. I will argue that the chiral charge should trigger the chiral plasma instability and seed the emission of helical electromagnetic waves. The frequencies of the corresponding waves lie in the radio to the near-infrared range. They carry a substantial amount of energy to modify observable features of pulsars and, perhaps, explain the fast radio bursts.