Slow Temperature Equilibration Behind the Shock Front of SN 1006
Abstract
We report on the observation of OVII Doppler line broadening in a compact knot at the edge of SN 1006 detected with the Reflective Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton. The observed line width of sigma = 3.4+/-0.5 eV at a line energy of 574 eV indicates an oxygen temperature of kT = 528+/-150 keV. Combined with the observed electron temperature of 1.5 keV the observed broadening is direct evidence for temperature non-equilibration in high Mach number shocks, and slow subsequent equilibration. The OVII line emission allows an accurate determination of the ionization state of the plasma, which is characterized by a relatively high forbidden line contribution, indicating log(n_e t) ~ 9.2.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0303051,
title = {Slow Temperature Equilibration Behind the Shock Front of SN 1006},
author = {Jacco Vink and J. Martin Laming and Ming Feng Gu and Andrew Rasmussen and Jelle S. Kaastra},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0303051},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted by Astrophysical Journal Letters, 4 pages, 4 figures. One of the original figures has been replaced by a color version (Fig. 1a)