Hydrodynamic simulation of supernova remnants including efficient particle acceleration

Abstract

A number of supernova remnants (SNRs) show nonthermal X-rays assumed to be synchrotron emission from shock accelerated TeV electrons. The existence of these TeV electrons strongly suggests that the shocks in SNRs are sources of galactic cosmic rays (CRs). In addition, there is convincing evidence from broad-band studies of individual SNRs and elsewhere that the particle acceleration process in SNRs can be efficient and nonlinear. If SNR shocks are efficient particle accelerators, the production of CRs impacts the thermal properties of the shock heated, X-ray emitting gas and the SNR evolution. We report on a technique that couples nonlinear diffusive shock acceleration, including the backreaction of the accelerated particles on the structure of the forward and reverse shocks, with a hydrodynamic simulation of SNR evolution. Compared to models which ignore CRs, the most important hydrodynamical effects of placing a significant fraction of shock energy into CRs are larger shock compression ratios and lower temperatures in the shocked gas. We compare our results, which use an approximate description of the acceleration process, with a more complete model where the full CR transport equations are solved (i.e., Berezhko et al., 2002), and find excellent agreement for the CR spectrum summed over the SNR lifetime and the evolving shock compression ratio. The importance of the coupling between particle acceleration and SNR dynamics for the interpretation of broad-band continuum and thermal X-ray observations is discussed.