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The supernova remnant shock fronts generally observed at optical and UV wavelengths are radiative shocks, which convert most of the thermal energy of the shocked gas into radiation. Much fainter, pure Balmer line emission is produced by nonradiative shocks in partially neutral gas. Because this emission arises very close to the shock front itself, it provides several important diagnostics for the physical processes in high-Mach-number collisionless shocks.
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J. C. Raymond (1991) studied this question.
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