The Crab nebula's wisps as shocked pulsar wind

Details The Crab nebula's wisps as shocked pulsar wind The Crab nebula's wisps as shocked pulsar wind

Jul 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992pip..work...23g&link_type=abstract

Presented at the Physics of Isolated Pulsars Workshop, Taos, NM, 23-28 Feb. 1992

Physics

Crab Nebula, Electron-Positron Plasmas, Particle Acceleration, Pulsars, Space Plasmas, Stellar Winds, Synchrotron Radiation, Equations Of Motion, Magnetohydrodynamic Flow, Shock Heating, Shock Waves

Scientific paper

The Crab synchrotron nebula has been successfully modelled as the post-shock region of a relativistic, magnetized wind carrying most of the spindown luminosity from the central pulsar. While the Crab is the best-studied example, most of the highest spindown luminosity pulsars are also surrounded by extended synchrotron nebulae, and several additional supernova remnants with 'plerionic' morphologies similar to the Crab are known where the central object is not seen. All these objects have nonthermal, power-law spectra attributable to accelerated high-energy particles thought to originate in a Crab-like relativistic pulsar wind. However, proposed models have so far treated the wind shock as an infinitesimally thin discontinuity, with an arbitrarily ascribed particle acceleration efficiency. To make further progress, investigations resolving the shock structure seemed in order. Motivated by these considerations, we have performed particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of perpendicularly magnetized shocks in electron-positron and electron-positron-ion plasmas. The shocks in pure electron-positron plasmas were found to produce only thermal distributions downstream, and are thus poor candidates as particle acceleration sites. When the upstream plasma flow also contained a smaller population of positive ions, however, efficient acceleration of positrons, and to a lesser extent of electrons, was observed in the simulations.

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