Blast waves with cosmic-ray pressure

The effect of efficient cosmic-ray acceleration on the structure of blast waves and of driven waves created by supernova explosions is investigated. The solutions for the structures are used in predicting the pion-decay gamma-ray fluxes from supernovae and supernova remnants. The solutions are parameterized using w, which is the ratio of the relativistic cosmic-ray pressure to the total pressure in the shock front. For blast waves from a point explosion in a uniform medium, the cosmic rays are found to dominate the pressure near r = 0 if w is greater than 0. The solutions reveal that, if w is small, the ratio of cosmic-ray energy to the total energy in the blast wave is several times w. The solutions are used in making specific prediction of the pion-decay gamma-ray flux from a blast wave as a function of w. If w is large, the predicted fluxes from supernova remnants approximate the current observational limits. It is also pointed out that cosmic rays may limit the compression in the radiative shock waves of supernova remnants.

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