Interaction of a Pulsar Wind with the Expanding Supernova Remnant

Recent HST (Hubble Space Telescope) observations of the Crab Nebula show filamentary structures that appear to originate from the Rayleigh-Taylor (R-T) instability operating on the supernova ejecta accelerated by the pulsar-driven wind. In order to understand the origin and formation of the filaments in the Crab Nebula, we study the interaction of a pulsar wind with the uniformly expanding supernova remnant by means of numerical simulation. We derive the self-similar solution of this model for a general power law density profile of supernova ejecta. By performing two-dimensional numerical simulations, we find three independent instabilities in the interaction region between the pulsar wind and the expanding supernova remnant. The first weak instability occurs in the very beginning, and is caused by the impulsive acceleration of supernova ejecta by the pulsar wind. The second instability occurs in the post-shock flow (shock wave driven by pulsar bubble) during the intermediate stage. This second

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