Magnetic Reconnection with Strong Synchrotron Cooling in Pulsar Magnetospheres

The magnetosphere of a rotating pulsar naturally develops a current sheet beyond the light cylinder (LC). Magnetic reconnection in this current sheet inevitably dissipates a nontrivial fraction of the pulsar spin-down power within a few LC radii. In this presentation, a basic physical picture of reconnection in this environment is developed. It is shown that reconnection proceeds in the plasmoid-dominated regime, via an hierarchical chain of multiple secondary islands/flux ropes. The inter-plasmoid reconnection layers are subject to strong synchrotron cooling, leading to significant plasma compression. The basic parameters of these current layers --- temperature, density, and layer thickness --- are estimated in terms of the upstream magnetic field. It is argued that, after accounting for the bulk Doppler boosting, the synchrotron and inverse-Compton emission mechanisms can explain the observed pulsed high-energy (GeV) and VHE ($\sim$ 100 GeV) radiation, respectively. The motions of the secondary plasmoids may contribute to the pulsar's radio emission.