High Energy Studies of Pulsar Wind Nebulae

TL;DR

This paper reviews the structure, evolution, and high-energy emission of pulsar wind nebulae, highlighting how multi-wavelength observations inform us about their composition, dynamics, and particle energies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of pulsar wind nebulae, emphasizing recent observational constraints and the connection to very high energy gamma-ray sources.

Findings

Pulsar wind nebulae reveal detailed information about wind composition and injection history.

Multi-wavelength data constrain nebula evolution and particle energies.

Associations with gamma-ray sources shed light on high-energy emission mechanisms.

Abstract

The extended nebulae formed as pulsar winds expand into their surroundings provide information about the composition of the winds, the injection history from the host pulsar, and the material into which the nebulae are expanding. Observations from across the electromagnetic spectrum provide constraints on the evolution of the nebulae, the density and composition of the surrounding ejecta, the geometry of the systems, the formation of jets, and the maximum energy of the particles in the nebulae. Here I provide a broad overview of the structure of pulsar wind nebulae, with specific examples that demonstrate our ability to constrain the above parameters. The association of pulsar wind nebulae with extended sources of very high energy gamma-ray emission are investigated, along with constraints on the nature of such high energy emission.