Radio emission and particle acceleration in plerionic supernova remnants
Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Munich, Germany e-mail: nodes@usm.uni-muenchen.de
Received:
13
January
2004
Accepted:
7
May
2004
Plerionic supernova remnants exhibit radio emission with remarkably
flat spectral indices ranging from 
to 
. The origin
of very hard particle energy distributions still awaits an explanation,
since shock waves generate particle distributions with synchrotron spectra
characterized by 
. Acceleration of high energy leptons in
magnetohydrodynamic turbulence instead may be responsible for the observed
hard spectra. This process is studied by means of relativistic test particle
calculations using electromagnetic fields produced by three-dimensional
simulations of resistive magnetohydrodynamical turbulence. The particles
receive power-law energy spectra 
with s
ranging from 1.2 to 1.6, i.e. particle spectra that are required to
explain the radio emission of plerions.
Key words: stars: pulsars: individual: Crab / radio continuum: stars / acceleration of particles / turbulence
© ESO, 2004