Jack Dinsmore (Stanford)

Rotation powered pulsars have extremely strong magnetic fields which sculpt the ultrarelativistic pulsar wind’s accelerator sites and guide the wind into the surrounding nebula. Wind particles emit synchrotron radiation in these magnetic fields, and this highly polarized emission constrains the magnetic field geometry. Optical and X-ray polarizations are particularly valuable since they may help uncover where and how the highest energy wind particles are accelerated. But these polarized light curves are rare, since they require advanced technology and analysis techniques to measure. I will discuss my work on the IXPE mission — the first dedicated X-ray polarimeter — which uncovered surprisingly highly polarized pulsars. I will also discuss my work on proto-Lightspeed — a CMOS optical instrument recently commissioned on the Magellan Clay telescope and now available as a PI instrument — which traced the light curves of all four rotation powered pulsars with known optical pulsations. Both efforts remain nascent and will produce more new results over the coming few years.