Related papers: Of Winds and Waves
Based on the expected population of core collapse supernova remnants and the huge number of detected pulsars in the Galaxy, still representing only a fraction of the real population, pulsar wind nebulae are likely to constitute one of the…
We numerically study the radiative properties of the reverberation phase of pulsar wind nebulae. Reverberation brings a significant evolution in a short period of time. We show that even the Crab nebula, associated to the more energetic…
I survey recent successes in the application of relativistic MHD and force-free electrodynamics to the modeling of the pulsars' rotational energy loss mechanism as well as to the structure and emission characteristics of Pulsar Wind…
Neutron stars lose the bulk of their rotational energy in the form of a pulsar wind: an ultra-relativistic outflow of predominantly electrons and positrons. This pulsar wind significantly impacts the environment and possible binary…
Several gamma-ray binaries show extended X-ray emission that may be associated to interactions of an outflow with the medium. Some of these systems are, or may be, high-mass binaries harboring young nonaccreting pulsars, in which the…
Our understanding of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe), has greatly improved in the last years thanks to unprecedented high resolution images taken from the HUBBLE, CHANDRA and XMM satellites. The discovery of complex but similar inner features,…
A significative fraction of high mass stars sail away through the interstellar medium of the galaxies. Once they evolved and died via a core collapse supernova, a magnetized, rotating neutron star (a pulsar) is usually their leftover. The…
A pulsar wind nebula inside a supernova remnant provides a unique insight into the properties of the central neutron star, the relativistic wind powered by its loss of rotational energy, its progenitor supernova, and the surrounding…
The spin-down power of a pulsar is thought to be carried away in an MHD wind in which, at least close to the star, the energy transport is dominated by Poynting flux. The pulsar drives a low-frequency wave in this wind, consisting of…
In the last few years, new observations by CHANDRA and XMM have shown that Pulsar Wind Nebulae present a complex but similar inner feature, with the presence of axisymmetric rings and jets, which is generally referred as {\it jet-torus…
In this contribution we review the recent progress in the modeling of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWN). We start with a brief overview of the relevant physical processes in the magnetosphere, the wind-zone and the inflated nebula bubble. Radiative…
We investigate a class of pulsar wind nebulae that show synchrotron emission from a thick toroidal structure. The best studied such object is the small radio and X-ray nebula around the Vela pulsar, which can be interpreted as the result of…
Recent X-ray observations of young rotation-powered pulsars are providing an unprecedented detailed view of pulsar wind nebulae. For the first time, coherent emission features involving wisps, co-aligned toroidal structures, and axial jets…
We present here the first effort to compute synthetic synchrotron polarization maps of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe). Our goal is to highlight how polarization can be used as an additional diagnostic tool for the flow structure in the inner…
Of the known pulsar wind nebulae, 8 are good candidates for being in the early stage of evolution where the wind nebula is interacting with the freely expanding supernova ejecta. Several of these have been identified with historical…
The number of plausible associations of extended VHE (TeV) sources with pulsars has been steadily growing, suggesting that many of these sources are pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). Here we overview the recent progress in X-ray and TeV…
Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) are ideal astrophysical laboratories where high energy relativistic phenomena can be investigated. They are close, well resolved in our observations, and the knowledge derived in their study has a strong impact in…
Hydrodynamical simulations are presented of a pulsar wind emitted by a supersonically moving pulsar. The pulsar moves through the interstellar medium or, in the more interesting case, through the supernova remnant created at its birth…
A review of recent observations of the kinematics of six objects that represent the broad range of phenomena called planetary nebulae (PNe) is presented. It is demonstrated that Hubble-type outflows are predominant, consequently it is…
Pulsar Wind Nebulae are the astrophysical sources that host the most relativistic shocks in Nature and the only Galactic sources in which we have direct evidence of PeV particles. These facts make them very interesting from the point of…