2023/10/03 by Aya Bamba, Bamba, Aya, Hidetoshi Sano +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.01797
openalex publication_date 2023/10/03 · openalex created_date 2023/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is an open issue how the surrounding environment of supernova remnant shocks affect nonthermal X-rays from accelerated electrons, with or without interacting dense material. We have conducted spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy of the shock-cloud interacting region of RCW 86 with XMM-Newton. It is found that bright soft X-ray filaments surround the dense cloud observed with 12CO and HI emission lines. These filaments are brighter in thermal X-ray emission, and fainter and possibly softer in synchrotron X-rays, compared to those without interaction. Our results show that the shock decelerates due to the interaction with clouds, which results in an enhancements of thermal X-ray emission. This could possibly also explain the softer X-ray synchrotron component, because it implies that those shocks that move through a low density environment, and therefore decelerate much less, can be more efficient accelerators. This is similar to SN 1006 and Tycho, and is in contrast to RX J1713.7-3946. This difference among remnants may be due to the clumpiness of dense material interacting with the shock, which should be examined with future observations.