The stellar-wind model of pulsar magnetospheres

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Abstract
The method of characteristics is employed to investigate the global structure of the plasma-electromagnetic fields in a pressure- and gravity-free relativistic stellar wind. It is shown that the locus of the magnetosonic point which constitutes the dividing surface between the elliptic and the hyperbolic domains of the flow cannot lie entirely at infinity; and that the equatorial solutions reported in the literature, for which the magnetosonic point occurs asymptotically, cannot be extended into any global solutions that are physically tenable outside the equator. It is furthermore demonstrated that the results of the present study corroborate the impossibility of regularizing the Alfvénic singularity.

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