Constraints on the Physics of Type Ia Supernovae from the X-Ray Spectrum of the Tycho Supernova Remnant

By C. Badenes, K. Borkowski, J. Hughes, U. Hwang, E. Bravo. 2005

197 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we use high-quality X-ray observations from XMM-Newton and Chandra to gain new insights into the explosion that originated Tycho's supernova 433 yr ago. We perform a detailed comparison between the ejecta emission from the spatially integrated X-ray spectrum of the supernova remnant and current models for Type Ia supernova explosions. We use a grid of synthetic X-ray spectra based on hydrodynamic models of the evolution of the supernova remnant and nonequilibrium ionization calculations for the state of the shocked plasma. We find that the fundamental properties of the X-ray emission in Tycho are well reproduced by a one-dimensional delayed detonation model with a kinetic energy of ~1.2 × 1051 ergs. All the other paradigms for Type Ia explosions that we have tested, including one-dimensional deflagrations, pulsating delayed detonations, and sub-Chandrasekhar explosions, as well as deflagration models calculated in three dimensions, fail to provide a good approximation of the observed ejecta emission. Our results require that the supernova ejecta retain some degree of chemical stratification, with Fe peak elements interior to intermediate-mass elements. This strongly suggests that a supersonic burning front (i.e., a detonation) must be involved at some stage in the physics of Type Ia supernova explosions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8f7b47ca7c0c002a92e57d2f471a2150d6059a82

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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Citations in the corpus

• DISCOVERY OF TeV GAMMA-RAY EMISSION FROM TYCHO’S SUPERNOVA REMNANT (2011, background): “We note the crucial point that, in both the leptonic and hadronic models, the total relativistic particle energy is dominated by hadrons, and it represents a significant fraction of the total supernova kinetic energy, estimated to be 1.2 × 1051 ergs (Badenes et al. 2006).”
• Observational Clues to the Progenitors of Type Ia Supernovae (2013, background): “…and ionization of the ejecta and the CSM, and attempts to reproduce, the observed geometry, dynamics, and X-ray spectrum of a remnant (e.g., Badenes et al. 2006, 2008; Kosenko, Blinnikov & Vink 2011; Kosenko et al. 2008; Patnaude et al. 2012; Sorokina et al. 2004; see Vink 2012 for a…”
• Are the Models for Type Ia Supernova Progenitors Consistent with the Properties of Supernova Remnants? (2007, methodology): “…and SN 1006 have been traditionally regarded as prototypical Type Ia SNRs based on their X-ray spectra and other evidence, and their origin has been confirmed by detailed modeling of the ejecta emission (for Tycho, see Badenes et al. 2006; for SN 1006, see C. Badenes et al. 2007, in preparation).”
• X-ray spectroscopy of galaxy clusters: studying astrophysical processes in the largest celestial laboratories (2009, background): “Optical light curves (Woosley et al. 2007) and spectra (Mazzali et al. 2007), the X-ray emission of SN Ia remnants (Badenes et al. 2006, 2008) all show that thestructure of the SN Ia ejecta has to be very close to what one-dimensional delayed detonation models predict: most of the white dwarf is…”
• VARIABLE SODIUM ABSORPTION IN A LOW-EXTINCTION TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA, (2009, background): “…occurred in 1885 (de Vaucouleurs & Corwin 1985; Fesen, Saken, & Hamilton 1989) and there have been no SNe Ia observed in the Milky Way in over 400 years (Ruiz-Lapuente 2004; Badenes et al. 2006; Krause et al. 2008), direct empirical constraints on the nature of the progenitors are severely lacking.”
• Sub-Chandrasekhar-mass White Dwarf Detonations Revisited (2017, background): “…emission can be used to infer nucleosynthetic yields, although the process is complicated by noisy spectra, non-equilibrium ionization effects, asymmetric and inhomogeneous density distributions, and incomplete propagation of the reverse shock into the ejecta (Badenes et al. 2006; Vink 2012).”
• SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR WHITE DWARF MERGERS AS THE PROGENITORS OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2010, background): “For instance, Badenes et al. (2006) find that for Tycho, models with about twice as much iron-peak as intermediate-mass elements best reproduce the X-ray spectrum, consistent with SN 1572A having been a “standard” SN Ia (confirmed beautifully using light echoes; Krause et al. 2008).”
• EVLA OBSERVATIONS CONSTRAIN THE ENVIRONMENT AND PROGENITOR SYSTEM OF Type Ia SUPERNOVA 2011fe (2012, background): “5 in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Tycho SNR (both ∼400 years old) imply that these SNRs are surrounded by uniformmedia of density∼0.5–1 cm−3 (Badenes et al. 2006, 2008), typical of the warm phase of the interstellar medium.”