THREE-DIMENSIONAL RELATIVISTIC MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF CURRENT-DRIVEN INSTABILITY. II. RELAXATION OF PULSAR WIND NEBULA

We have investigated the relaxation of a hydrostatic hot plasma column containing toroidal magnetic field by the current-driven (CD) kink instability as a model of pulsar wind nebulae. In our simulations, the CD kink instability is excited by a small initial velocity perturbation and develops a turbulent structure inside the hot plasma column. We demonstrate that, as envisioned by Begelman, the hoop stress declines and the initial gas pressure excess near the axis decreases. The magnetization parameter σ, the ratio of the Poynting to the kinetic energy flux, declines from an initial value of 0.3 to about 0.01 when the CD kink instability saturates. Our simulations demonstrate that axisymmetric models strongly overestimate the elongation of the pulsar wind nebulae. Therefore, the previous requirement for an extremely low pulsar wind magnetization can be abandoned. The observed structure of the pulsar wind nebulae does not contradict the natural assumption that the magnetic energy flux still remains a good fraction of the total energy flux after dissipation of alternating fields.