No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2017
Supernova remnants are the site of a number of physical processes (shock-heating, non-equilibrium ionization, hydrodynamic instabilities, particle acceleration, magnetic field amplification). Their related emission processes provide us with a large set of observational data. Supernova remnants result from the interaction of high-velocity material ejected by the supernova explosion with the medium surrounding the progenitor star. This interaction gives rise to a double-shock structure that lasts for hundreds of years, with a forward shock and a reverse shock compressing and heating to tens million of degrees the surrounding medium and the ejecta, respectively. It is mostly in this phase that young supernova remnants provide information on their explosion mechanism through spectro-imaging observations of the ejected nucleosynthesis products and their dynamics, notably in the X-ray domain. I will review these observations and their implications for our current understanding of the dynamics of supernova remnants. I will conclude on the prospects with future facilities.