Abstract
Pulsar wind nebulae inside young supernova remnants, and in particular the Crab nebula, are probably the best laboratories for high-energy astrophysics and relativistic plasma physics. They have been modeled numerically for more than a decade through multi-dimensional relativistic MHD simulations, relying on axial symmetry until a few years ago while currently using full three-dimensional simulations employing adaptive meshes. Here, we discuss the most recent findings, especially those obtained by our Arcetri group, focusing on the problem of magnetic field dissipation inside the nebula.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge support from the PRIN-MIUR project Multi-scale Simulations of High-Energy Astrophysical Plasmas (Prot. 2015L5EE2Y).
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This paper is the peer-reviewed version of a contribution selected among those presented at the Conference on Gamma-Ray Astrophysics with the AGILE Satellite held at Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome on December 11–13, 2017.
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Del Zanna, L., Olmi, B., Amato, E. et al. The Crab nebula in the light of three-dimensional relativistic MHD simulations. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 30 (Suppl 1), 93–96 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-019-00759-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-019-00759-y