Interplay between physics and geometry in Balmer filaments: the case of SN 1006
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Description
GM and RB acknowledge the financial support from the ASI-INAF agreement no. 2017-14-H.0 ‘Attivita` di Studio per la comunita` scientifica di Astrofisica delle Alte Energie e Fisica Astroparticellare – Analisi dati, Teoria e Simulazioni’. SK was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Techno- logical Development of the Republic of Serbia through project no. 176021, ‘Visible and Invisible Matter in Nearby Galaxies: Theory and Observations’. JCR was supported by Guest Investigator grant HST-GO-13435.001 from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Abstract
The analysis of Balmer-dominated emission in supernova remnants is potentially a very powerful way to derive information on the shock structure, on the physical conditions of the ambient medium and on the cosmic ray acceleration efficiency. However, the outcome of models developed in plane-parallel geometry is usually not easily comparable with the data, since they often come from regions with rather a complex geometry. We present here a general scheme to disentangle physical and geometrical effects in the data interpretation, which is especially powerful when the transition zone of the shock is spatially resolved and the spectral resolution is high enough to allow a detailed investigation of spatial changes of the line profile. We then apply this technique to re-analyse very high-quality data of a region along the northwestern limb of the remnant of SN 1006. We show how some observed features, previously interpreted only in terms of spatial variations of physical quantities, naturally arise from geometrical effects. With these effects under control, we derive new constraints on physical quantities in the analysed region, like the ambient density (in the range 0.03-0.1{ cm^{-3}}), the upstream neutral fraction (more likely in the range 0.01-0.1), the level of face-on surface brightness variations (with factors up to ∼3), and the typical scale lengths related to such variations (⪞ 0.1{ pc}, corresponding to angular scales ⪞ 10{ arcsec}).
Volume
483
Issue
2
Start page
1537
Issn Identifier
0035-8711
Ads BibCode
2019MNRAS.483.1537B
Rights
open.access
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