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Pulsar Glitch 2D: Vortex Avalanche Network

Interactive 2D pulsar glitch model: hundreds of individually-pinned superfluid vortices, each with its own random pinning strength and local neighbor coupling, unpin in self-organized-criticality avalanches of variable size — watch coupling strength shift the crust between a slow 'trickle' regime and sudden 'domino' glitches, tracked live on a spin-frequency sawtooth chart.

Space & Astronomy2DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This is the 2D counterpart to the 3D pulsar-glitch simulation, built as an independent numerical model rather than a flattened version of the same scene. Instead of one global critical lag that releases a fixed fraction of stored angular momentum the instant it is crossed, this model gives each of 480 individually-pinned superfluid vortices its own randomly-drawn pinning strength and couples it to its neighbors, so that one vortex unpinning can destabilize nearby sites and trigger a cascade — a self-organized-criticality avalanche network of the kind used in the real vortex-avalanche literature to explain why observed pulsar glitch sizes vary so widely. Every individual unpinning event exactly conserves angular momentum between the crust and the pinned superfluid. Adjust the pinning disorder and vortex-vortex coupling to move the system between a "trickle" regime of frequent tiny avalanches and a "domino" regime of rare large ones, and watch the live crust spin-frequency sawtooth chart record each glitch as it happens.

⚙ Under the hood

The 2D counterpart to the 3D pulsar-glitch simulation: instead of one global critical lag releasing a fixed fraction of stored angular momentum, 480 individually-pinned superfluid vortices each carry their own randomly-drawn pinning strength and locally couple to their neighbors, producing genuine self-organized-criticality avalanches of variable size — watch coupling strength shift the crust between a slow 'trickle' regime and sudden 'domino' glitches, tracked live on a spin-frequency sawtooth chart.

pulsarneutron starsuperfluidvortex pinningangular momentumself-organized criticalityastrophysics

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install