Maxwellian synchrotron sources

Abstract

The emission, absorption, polarization, and biréfringent properties of a magnetized, rela-tivistic, Maxwellian electron plasma are computed. The Maxwellian synchrotron source is notable for the near absence of Faraday rotation and polarization conversion. When opaque, the emission from a Maxwellian synchrotron source is Planckian, and hence unpolarized. The first-order self-Compton spectrum includes a high-frequency tail which extends well beyond the nominal cutoff frequency. The self-Compton spectral flux is simply related to the source Compton optical depth, and it is argued that only at y-ray energies would the second-order self-Compton emission be significant for realistic particle distributions and typical source parameters. To illustrate the basic properties of Maxwellian sources, a uniform, isothermal Maxwellian source model has been fitted to the radio and X-ray spectrum of 3C 273.