Planck intermediate results. XXXI. Microwave survey of Galactic supernova remnants

The all-sky Planck survey in 9 frequency bands was used to search for emission from all 274 known Galactic supernova remnants. Of these, 17 were detected in at least two Planck frequencies. The radio-through-microwave spectral energy distributions were compiled to determine the emission mechanism for microwave emission. In only one case, IC 443, is the high-frequency emission clearly from dust associated with the supernova remnant. In all cases, the low-frequency emission is from synchrotron radiation. A single power law, as predicted for a population of relativistic particles with energy distribution that extends continuously to high energies, is evident for many sources, including the Crab and PKS 1209-51/52. A decrease in flux density relative to the extrapolation of radio emission is evident in several sources. Their spectral energy distributions can be approximated as broken power laws, $S_nuproptonu^{-alpha}$, with the spectral index, $alpha$, with the spectral index, alpha, increasing by 0.5 to 1 above a break frequency in the range 10 to 60 GHz. The break could be due to synchrotron losses.