The recently conducted eROSITA All-Sky Survey and the serendipitous source catalogues from pointed X-ray missions, like XMM-Newton, allow to significantly increase the population of thermally emitting isolated neutron stars (INSs). This promises exciting insights into the physics of ultra-dense matter, INS magnetic field evolution, and to study evolutionary pathways and links. However, with...
Magnetars, the most strongly magnetized class of the isolated neutron star population, are characterized by large-scale dipolar magnetic fields of order $10^{14}$ G, which are responsible for their rapid spin-down. The origin of such intense dipolar fields remains an open problem. In this talk, I will discuss the role of the chiral magnetic effect, arising from the chiral anomaly, which...
The spectacular Lighthouse nebula offers a rare opportunity to study how the most energetic pulsar wind particles escape into the ambient ISM near the apex of the bowshock of the highly supersonic pulsar. The >7-arcmin-long pulsar filament is by far the brightest among its peers and the only one allowing for informative spatially-resolved spectroscopy constraining the SED of the injected...
Neutron stars—pulsars—and their magnetospheres are key sources for multi-messenger astrophysics. Their emission spans the entire electromagnetic spectrum, they are strong candidates for contributing to the cosmic-ray positron excess, and theoretical models (though not yet confirmed observationally) suggest that they may also produce high-energy neutrinos in the TeV–PeV range. By combining...