Pulsar Wind Nebula (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles A pulsar wind nebula (also known as "plerion," derived from Ancient Greek "pleres" meaning "full"-a term coined by Weiler & Panagia 1978]) is a nebula powered by the pulsar wind of a pulsar. At the early stages (first few thousands of years) of their evolution, pulsar wind nebulae are often found inside the shells of supernova remnants. However, pulsar wind nebulae have also been found around older pulsars whose supernova remnants have disappeared, including millisecond radio pulsars (e.g. Stappers et al. 2003). A prototypical pulsar wind nebula is the Crab Nebula (Hester et al. 2008). Pulsar winds are composed of charged particles accelerated to relativistic speed by the rapidly rotating, superstrong magnetic field of the spinning pulsar. The pulsar wind streams into the interstellar medium, creating a standing shock wave, where it is decelerated to sub-relativistic speed. Beyond this radius synchrotron emission increases in the magnetized flow.