Abstract
Pulsars with high spin-down power produce relativistic winds radiating a non-negligible fraction of this power over the whole electromagnetic range from radio to gamma-rays in the pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). The rest of the power is dissipated in the interactions of the PWNe with the ambient interstellar medium (ISM). Some of the PWNe are moving relative to the ambient ISM with supersonic speeds producing bow shocks. In this case, the ultrarelativistic particles accelerated at the termination surface of the pulsar wind may undergo reacceleration in the converging flow system formed by the plasma outflowing from the wind termination shock and the plasma inflowing from the bow shock. The presence of magnetic perturbations in the flow, produced by instabilities induced by the accelerated particles themselves, is essential for the process to work. A generic outcome of this type of reacceleration is the creation of particle distributions with very hard spectra, such as are indeed required to explain the observed spectra of synchrotron radiation with photon indices \(\varGamma\lesssim 1.5\). The presence of this hard spectral component is specific to PWNe with bow shocks (BSPWNe). The accelerated particles, mainly electrons and positrons, may end up containing a substantial fraction of the shock ram pressure. In addition, for typical ISM and pulsar parameters, the \(e^{+}\) released by these systems in the Galaxy are numerous enough to contribute a substantial fraction of the positrons detected as cosmic ray (CR) particles above few tens of GeV and up to several hundred GeV. The escape of ultrarelativistic particles from a BSPWN—and hence, its appearance in the far-UV and X-ray bands—is determined by the relative directions of the interstellar magnetic field, the velocity of the astrosphere and the pulsar rotation axis. In this respect we review the observed appearance and multiwavelength spectra of three different types of BSPWNe: PSR J0437-4715, the Guitar and Lighthouse nebulae, and Vela-like objects. We argue that high resolution imaging of such objects provides unique information both on pulsar winds and on the ISM. We discuss the interpretation of imaging observations in the context of the model outlined above and estimate the BSPWN contribution to the positron flux observed at the Earth.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank a referee for a constructive comment. A.M. Bykov and E. Amato thank the staff of ISSI for their generous hospitality and assistance. A.M. Bykov and A.E. Petrov were supported by the RSF grant 16-12-10225. A.B. thanks A.V. Artemyev, S.M. Osipov, and G.G. Pavlov for discussions. Some of the modeling was performed at the “Tornado” subsystem of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University supercomputing center.
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Bykov, A.M., Amato, E., Petrov, A.E. et al. Pulsar Wind Nebulae with Bow Shocks: Non-thermal Radiation and Cosmic Ray Leptons. Space Sci Rev 207, 235–290 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-017-0371-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-017-0371-7