Some aspects of cosmic synchrotron sources

Synchrotron emission is considered from individual particles which have small pitch angles and the general properties of synchrotron sources which mainly contain such particles, as well as the emissivities and degrees of circular polarization for specific source distributions. The limitation of synchrotron source models for optical pulsars and compact extragalactic objects are discussed, and it is shown that several existing models for the pulsar NP 0532 are inconsistent with the measured time variations and polarizations of the optical emission. Discussion is made also of whether the low frequency falloffs in the extragalactic objects PKS 2134 + 004, OQ 208, and NGC 1068 is due to emission from particles with small pitch angles or absorption by a thermal plasma or synchrotron self-absorption. It is concluded that the absorption interpretations cannot account for the turnover in the spectrum of PKS 2134 + 004. Measurements of polarization, angular structure, and X-ray flux are also described.