One of the 2016 Gulbenkian Prizes for Stimulus to Scientific Research in the area of “Earth and Space Sciences” was awarded Fábio C for his project “Multiscale modeling of pulsar magnetospheres”.

In this project, Fábio will model pulsar magnetospheres – one the most extreme and exotic environments in the Universe – using advanced numerical tools, capable of solving the self-­consistent collective dynamics of the electron­-positron (e-e+) plasmas surrounding these compact astronomical objects. Moreover, by resorting to ab initio massively parallel simulations, it will be possible to model, for the first time, the formation process of the e-e+ cascades in the vacuum gaps of pulsar magnetospheres due to quantum electrodynamical (QED) processes in a realistic geometry. Understanding the self-consistent dynamics of these e-e+ cascades that supply the pulsar magnetospheric plasma, and bridging this microscopic scale physics with a global, macroscopic model, will allow an identification of the key signatures in the electromagnetic (incoherent and coherent, from the radio to the gamma ray region of the spectrum) and particle spectra of pulsars, and ultimately to make a connection with astronomical observations.

The scientific interest on the field pulsar astrophysics has been recently boosted by the remarkable progress in high performance computing and advanced numerical techniques. With these advances, it is possible to integrate kinetic and large-scale physical models, and contribute to an understanding of the complex combination of the wealth of phenomena involved in pulsar magnetospheres from a fundamental perspective.