Particle acceleration and non-thermal emission in Pulsar Wind Nebulae from relativistic MHD simulations

Abstract

Pulsar wind nebulae are among the most powerful particle accelerators in the Galaxy with acceleration efficiencies that reach up to 30% and maximum particle energies in the PeV range. In recent years relativistic axisymmetric MHD models have proven to be excellent tools for describing the physics of such objects, and particularly successful at explaining their high energy morphology, down to very fine details. Nevertheless, some important aspects of the physics of PWNe are still obscure: the mechanism(s) responsible for the acceleration of particles of all energies is (are) still unclear, and the origin of the lowest energy (radio emitting) particles is most mysterious. The correct interpretation of the origin of radio emitting particles is of fundamental importance, as this holds information about the amount of pair production in the pulsar magnetosphere, and hence on the role of pulsars as antimatter factories. On the other hand, the long lifetimes of these particles against synchrotron losses, allows them to travel far from their injection location, making their acceleration site difficult to constrain. As far as the highest energy (X and gamma-ray emitting) particles are concerned, their acceleration is commonly believed to occur at the pulsar wind termination shock. But since the upstream flow is thought to have non-uniform properties along the shock surface, important constraints on the acceleration mechanism(s) could come from exact knowledge of the location and flow properties where particles are being accelerated. We investigate in detail both topics by means of 2D numerical MHD simulations. Different assumptions on the origin of radio particles and more generally on the injection sites of all particles are considered, and the corresponding emission properties are computed. We discuss the physical constraints that can be inferred from comparison of the synthetic emission properties against multiwavelength observations of the PWN class prototype, the Crab Nebula.