hide
Free keywords:
Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE, Astrophysics, Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, astro-ph.SR,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
Magnetic fields represent a crucial aspect of the physics and astrophysics of
neutron stars. Despite its great relevance, the internal magnetic field
configuration of neutron stars is very poorly constrained by the observations,
and understanding its properties is a long-standing theoretical challenge. The
investigation on the subject is focused on the search for those magnetic field
geometries which are stable on several Alfv\`en timescales, thus constituting a
viable description of neutron star interiors. Assesing the stability of a given
magnetic field geometry is therefore an important part of this research. So far
only simple configurations, such as the purely poloidal or purely toroidal
ones, have been studied in detail in perturbation theory and, most recently, by
means of nonlinear magnetohydrodynamic simulations. Here we review the basic
results of the state-of-the-art general relativistic nonlinear studies,
discussing the present status of the field and its future directions.
