FLUXOID DYNAMICS IN RELATIVISTICALLY STREAMING PLASMAS

When particle inertia causes the magnetohydrodynamic flux-freezing condition to fail, a flux-vorticity conservation theorem can be valid: for relativistically streaming, multifluid, pressure-free plasmas, each species has a 'fluxoid' that is frozen-in to its motion. Here, fluxoid dynamics is treated with particular reference to the effects of scalar partial pressure gradients corresponding to nonrelativistic thermal speeds. Several forms of the theorem are given, including explicitly covariant ones valid in general relativity. The circumstances under which the separate contributions to the fluoxid law have significant effects on fluxoid dynamics are made clear by order-of-magnitude analysis. The case of steadily rotating systems is developed and used to investigate the applicability of the fluxoid theorem to pulsar magnetospheres.