Evidence for efficient cosmic ray acceleration by supernova remnants

by Jacco Vink (Inst. of Astronomy, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Wednesday 21 Mar 2007, 13:45 → 14:45 Europe/Stockholm

FA 31

Supernova remnants have long been suspected to be the origin of Galactic cosmic rays, i.e. cosmic rays with energies up to or slightly beyond 1015 eV. The reason is that the energetics of supernovae and the supernova rate are sufficient to explain the cosmic ray energy density in the Galaxy. However, for a long time it was uncertain whether supernova remnants could accelerate to energies of 1015 eV or higher. New evidence from both X-ray and gamma-ray observatories shed now a new light on this issue and suggest that, indeed, supernova remnants are capable of rapid acceleration of particles at least up to 1015 eV. I will discuss in particular the evidence obtained by X-ray observations.