THE RELATION BETWEEN POST-SHOCK TEMPERATURE, COSMIC-RAY PRESSURE, AND COSMIC-RAY ESCAPE FOR NON-RELATIVISTIC SHOCKS

Journal Article · Wed Oct 20 04:00:00 EDT 2010 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/722/2/1727· OSTI ID:21464595

Vink, Jacco; Helder, Eveline A; Schure, K M ^[1]; Yamazaki, Ryo ^[2]

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1. Astronomical Institute, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80000, 3508 TA Utrecht (Netherlands)
2. Department of Physics and Mathematics, Aoyama Gakuin University, 5-10-1 Fuchinobe, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252-5258 (Japan)

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are thought to be the dominant source of Galactic cosmic rays. This requires that at least 5% of the available energy is transferred to cosmic rays, implying a high cosmic-ray pressure downstream of SNR shocks. Recently, it has been shown that the downstream temperature in some remnants is low compared to the measured shock velocities, implying that additional pressure supported by accelerated particles is present. Here we use a two-fluid thermodynamic approach to derive the relation between post-shock fractional cosmic-ray pressure and post-shock temperature, assuming no additional heating beyond adiabatic heating in the shock precursor and with all non-adiabatic heating occurring at the subshock. The derived relations show that a high fractional cosmic-ray pressure is only possible if a substantial fraction of the incoming energy flux escapes from the system. Recently, a shock velocity and a downstream proton temperature were measured for a shock in the SNR RCW 86. We apply the two-fluid solutions to these measurements and find that the downstream fractional cosmic-ray pressure is at least 50% with a cosmic-ray energy flux escape of at least 20%. In general, in order to have 5% of the supernova energy to go into accelerating cosmic rays, on average the post-shock cosmic-ray pressure needs to be 30% for an effective cosmic-ray adiabatic index of {gamma}{sub cr} = 4/3.

• OSTI ID: 21464595
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 722; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ACCELERATION
COSMIC RADIATION
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
ENERGY RANGE
IONIZING RADIATIONS
PROTON TEMPERATURE
RADIATIONS
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
SHOCK WAVES
SUPERNOVA REMNANTS