Spectral modelling of a H.E.S.S.-detected pulsar wind nebula

Understand

In the last decade ground-based Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have discovered roughly 30 pulsar wind nebulae at energies above 100 GeV.

• We present first results from a leptonic emission code that models the spectral energy density of a pulsar wind nebula by solving the Fokker-Planck transport equation and calculating inverse Compton and synchrotron emissivities.
• Although models such as these have been developed before, most of them model the geometry of a pulsar wind nebula as that of a single sphere.
• We have created a time-dependent, multi-zone model to investigate changes in the particle spectrum as the particles diffuse through the pulsar wind nebula, as well as predict the radiation spectrum at different positions in the nebula.