Scientists at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences together with colleagues from Purdue University (USA) performed numerical calculations on the development of a flare in the magnetosphere of a neutron star. A team of researchers has discovered the key conditions under which rapid reconnection of magnetic fields forms a cloud near a star’s surface.

Neutron stars are compact solar mass objects, the size of which is comparable to the Moscow Garden Ring. These stars are formed as debris from the explosions of massive stars that are 10 times more massive than the Sun. They are sources of powerful radiation in a wide range of the spectrum – from radio to gamma rays, including cosmic rays. Neutron stars, which have fast rotation and a magnetic field, are used to provide precise time and coordinate services on Earth.

In the work of scientists, they studied a special type of neutron stars – magnetars. These are stars with a super-powerful magnetic field, which is a million billion times greater than that of the Earth or the Sun. Magnetars are sources of fast radio bursts – events in which as much energy is emitted in the radio range in one millisecond as the Sun will emit in a hundred years. Scientists were faced with the task of explaining how such short and powerful events are formed.

Scientists at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences together with colleagues from Purdue University (USA) performed numerical calculations on the development of a flare in the magnetosphere of a neutron star. A team of researchers has discovered the key conditions under which rapid reconnection of magnetic fields forms a cloud near a star’s surface. Because the star’s outward magnetic pressure decreases very rapidly, rapid nonlinear expansion of the hot magnetized cloud occurs. When the size of the cloud is equivalent to the distance to the neutron star, it turns into a relativistic ejection with a strong shock wave extending from the magnetar to infinity. Maxim Barkov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that this emission is the source of energy needed for fast radio bursts. Such bursts are observed by astronomers around the world, in Russia – at the Pushchino radio telescope, as well as at the Russian Konus space gamma spectrometer.