File:Shockfrontacceleration.svg

English: The shock front acceleration is a theoretical model to explain the acceleration of charged particles in supernovae or in jets of active galactic nuclei. The acceleration between two shock fronts is shown as an example. Shock fronts arise if the plasma of the supernova/jet reaches velocieties above the characteristic sonic speed of the plasma. The shock fronts transports high magnetic fields. An incident protons gets scattered at the magnetic fields of the shock fronts. Due to the chaotic magnetic fields the scattering angle is highly variable (not shown). In the scattering with the magnetic field of the inner shock front the proton can get accelerated. At the outer shock front it can be backscattered to be accelerated at the inner shock front again. With this mechanism charged particles can be accelerated to energies up to the high-energy component of the cosmic rays. The probability of an effective acceleration process is in the linear case proportional to energy⁻². By considering non linear effects the observed energy dependency of the high-energy component of cosmic rays can be reached.