Cosmic-ray acceleration in supernova remnants

Abstract

Supernovae are among the most energetic events in the Universe. During the event, they expel their material with enormous speeds into the surroundings. In addition, supernovae are thought to transfer a sizable fraction of their energy into just a few particles: cosmic rays. These cosmic rays acquire so much energy that they escape the supernova material with almost the speed of light. Some of these cosmic rays arrive on Earth, where in an unfortunate case, they can do damage to the electronics onboard satellites. This thesis describes several studies on the observational imprints of cosmic-ray acceleration in supernova remnants. We use optical and X-ray data to study how much energy is lost from the remnants to cosmic rays and how this energy is transferred to the particles.