Toward understanding the physical underpinnings of spatial and spectral morphologies of pulsar wind nebulae

Abstract

We discuss the observational properties of pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) linking them to the injected (at the termination shock) electron spectral energy distribution and parameters of pulsar magnetospheres. In particular, we (1) present spatially-resolved Chandra ACIS spectral maps of twelve PWNe and measure the slopes of the uncooled PWN spectra just downstream of the termination shock obtained from these maps, (2) consider the connections between PWN morphologies and predictions of the magnetospheric emission models and (3) discuss the limits on the maximum energies of particles in PWNe from X-ray and gamma-ray observations.

13 pages, 5 figures, to appear in AIP Conference Series

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• {\it NuSTAR} hard X-ray studies of the pulsar wind nebula 3C~58
• A Search for TeV Gamma-ray Emission from Pulsar Tails by VERITAS
• PSR J1709-4429's Proper Motion and its Relationship to SNR G343.1-2.3
• Revealing Hidden Variability in PWNe With Spectral Index Maps
• "The Goose" Pulsar Wind Nebula of PSR J1016-5857: The Birth of a Plerion
• Chandra X-ray Observations of PSR J1849-0001, its Pulsar Wind Nebula, and the TeV Source HESS J1849-000