Astron. Astrophys. 331, L37-L40 (1998)

Appendix

For , given the total energy

and angular momentum

the motion of the angular momentum vector in the coordinate system related to axes of inertia in the rotating frame is given by the following system of equations (Landau and Lifshits 1965):

where cn  , sn  , and dn  are elliptic Jacobi functions and the dimensionless time is

Specifying the relative differences , and expressing the precession phase in units of the dimensionless precession period

with the parameter k defined as

we calculate the curves shown in Fig. 2 for the position of the magnetic pole on the neutron star surface and the angular momentum vector as explained in the figure caption.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1998

Online publication: March 3, 1998
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