Alteration of the magnetosphere of the Vela pulsar during a glitch.

As pulsars lose energy, primarily in the form of magnetic dipole radiation, their rotation slows down accordingly. For some pulsars, this spin-down is interrupted by occasional abrupt spin-up events known as glitches . A glitch is hypothesized to be a catastrophic release of pinned vorticity that provides an exchange of angular momentum between the superfluid outer core and the crust.