Magnetized Plasma
There is now compelling evidence that magnetized plasma is
ejected from many astronomical objects (pulsars, jets associated
with active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursters, etc.) and
flows away at relativistic speeds. We study the outflow of
relativistic strongly magnetized plasma and its interaction
with an external medium. It is shown that this interaction may
be responsible for both acceleration of particles to very high
energies and generation of nonthermal radiation from these
astronomical objects.
Ultra-strong Magnetic Fields
A common feature of neutron stars is a very strong magnetic
field at their surface, up to million billion Gauss that is
about billion times more than the strength of magnetic fields
generated in scientific laboratories on the Earth. We consider
the properties of matter in such a strong magnetic field.
Quark-matter Entities
In 1984 Witten proposed that strange matter made of quarks is
the ground state. If this idea is true, at least some of the
compact objects known to astronomers as radio pulsars, accreting
X-ray sources, X-ray and gamma-ray bursters, etc. might be
strange-quark-matter stars, not neutron stars as usually
assumed. We study the properties of strange-quark-matter stars.
The main goal of our research is toinvestigate the physical
processes at, and radiation from, the surface of strange-quark-matter
stars, with a view to suggesting good observational signatures
that will distinguish them from neutron stars.
- Smolsky M.V. and Usov V.V. Relativistic beam
-- magnetic barrier collision and nonthermal radiation
of cosmological gamma-ray bursters. Astrophys.
J., 461, 858, 1996.
- Usov V.V. Millisecond pulsars with extremely
strong magnetic fields as a cosmological source of
gamma-ray bursts. Nature, 357, 472, 1992.
- Usov V.V. Bare quark matter surfaces of strange stars
and e+e- emission. Phys. Rev.
Letters, 80, 230, 1998.
Email: fnusov@weizmann.ac.il
Title: Professor
Tel: +972-8-934-3751
Fax: +972-8-946-5110
Building: K.B. Weissman
Room: P259
Research Interests: