2013/06/19 by Chuyuan Yang, Siming Liu · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Bremsstrahlung #Electron #Equipartition theorem #Gamma ray #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Magnetic field #Nuclear physics #Optics #Photon #Physics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Supernova #Supernova remnant #Synchrotron #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/773/2/138
3 figures. to appear on ApJ
arxiv created 2013/06/19 · openalex publication_date 2013/08/05 · arxiv updated 2015/06/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Current observations of supernova remnant (SNR) RX J1713.7-3946 favor the leptonic scenario for the TeV emission, where the radio to X-ray emission is produced via the synchrotron process and the γ-ray emission is produced via the inverse Comptonization of soft background photons, and the electron distribution can be inferred from the observed γ-ray spectrum with a spectral inversion method. It is shown that the observed correlation between the X-ray and γ-ray brightness of SNR RX J1713.7-3946 can be readily explained with the assumption that the energy density of energetic electrons is proportional to that of the magnetic field in such a scenario. A two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulation is then carried out to model the overall emission spectrum. It is found that the total energy of electrons above ∼1 GeV is equal to that of the magnetic field. This is the first piece of observational evidence for energy equipartition between energetic electrons and magnetic field in the downstream of strong collisionless astrophysical shocks of SNRs.