On Intrabinary Shocks in Spider Pulsars with Striped Winds

Spider pulsars are compact binary systems consisting of a millisecond pulsar and a low-mass companion, in which the relativistic pulsar wind interacts with the companion outflow to form an intrabinary shock (IBS). This shock is associated with particle acceleration and orbitally modulated X-ray emission. Due to their small orbital separations, these systems probe a regime where the striped pulsar wind may not have fully dissipated prior to reaching the IBS. While their existence is well established observationally, the geometry of the shock and the physical state of the pulsar wind at the interaction region remain poorly constrained. We plan to investigate the interaction between a magnetized, striped pulsar wind and the companion outflow using global relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, providing a framework to assess where and how dissipation occurs, as well as the resulting shock structure and conditions for particle acceleration.