Rotation-powered pulsars are among the most enigmatic of celestial objects. Unlike most other stars the energy responsible for their pulsed and unpulsed radiation is derived from a complicated coupling of their strong magnetic field and their rapid rotation. In the proposed work the Principal Investigator (PI) will employ a postdoctoral fellow in plasma physics, Dr. Brian Yang, to make computer models of relativistic shocks that excite wispy structures around some pulsars such as the Crab nebulae. This work is expected to aid in our understanding of how magnetism and rotation combine at high energies to produce radio pulses and x- and gamma- ray radiation, both in the magnetospheres of pulsars and the centers of many "active" galaxies.
