English

The deepest Chandra X-ray study of the plerionic supernova remnant G21.5$-$0.9

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-11-05 v3

Abstract

G21.5-0.9 is a plerionic supernova remnant (SNR) used as a calibration target for the Chandra X-ray telescope. The first observations found an extended halo surrounding the bright central pulsar wind nebula (PWN). A 2005 study discovered that this halo is limb-brightened and suggested the halo to be the missing SNR shell. In 2010 the spectrum of the limb-brightened shell was found to be dominated by non-thermal X-rays. In this study, we combine 15 years of Chandra observations comprising over 1~Msec of exposure time (796.1~ks with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) and 306.1~ks with the High Resolution Camera (HRC)) to provide the deepest-to-date imaging and spectroscopic study. The emission from the limb is primarily non-thermal and is described by a power-law model with a photon index Γ=2.22(2.042.34)\Gamma = 2.22 \, (2.04-2.34), plus a weak thermal component characterized by a temperature kT=0.37(0.200.64)kT = 0.37\, (0.20-0.64) keV and a low ionization timescale of net<2.95×1010n_{e}t < 2.95 \times 10^{10} cm3^{-3}s. The northern knot located in the halo is best fitted with a two-component power-law + non-equilibrium ionization thermal model characterized by a temperature of 0.14 keV and an enhanced abundance of silicon, confirming its nature as ejecta. We revisit the spatially resolved spectral study of the PWN and find that its radial spectral profile can be explained by diffusion models. The best fit diffusion coefficient is D2.1×1027cm2/sD \sim 2.1\times 10^{27}\rm cm^2/s assuming a magnetic field B=130μGB =130 \mu G, which is consistent with recent 3D MHD simulation results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.01461,
  title  = {The deepest Chandra X-ray study of the plerionic supernova remnant G21.5$-$0.9},
  author = {Benson Guest and Samar Safi-Harb and Xiaping Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.01461},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

13 pages, 14 figures, accepted to be published in MNRAS, updated to match published version