  It is generally thought that most of the spin-down power of a pulsar is
carried away in an MHD wind dominated by Poynting flux. In the case of an
oblique rotator, a significant part of this energy can be considered to be in a
low-frequency wave, consisting of stripes of toroidal magnetic field of
alternating polarity, propagating in a region around the equatorial plane.
Magnetic reconnection in such a structure has been proposed as a mechanism for
transforming the Poynting flux into particle energy in the pulsar wind. We have
re-examined this process and conclude that the wind accelerates significantly
in the course of reconnection. This dilates the timescale over which the
reconnection process operates, so that the wind requires a much larger distance
than was previously thought in order to convert the Poynting flux to particle
flux. In the case of the Crab, the wind is still Poynting-dominated at the
radius at which a standing shock is inferred from observation. An estimate of
the radius of the termination shock for other pulsars implies that all except
the milli-second pulsars have Poynting-flux dominated winds all the way out to
the shock front.
