ABBL-iTHEMS Joint Astro Seminar by Chelsea Braun on October 6, 2023

Presented was a systematic, global study of Galactic supernova remnants (SNRs) hosting Central Compact Objects (CCOs) aimed at addressing their explosion properties and supernova progenitors. With the Chandra and XMM-Newton telescopes, a spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy study is performed on seven SNRs that show evidence of shock-heated ejecta. Using an algorithm, we segmented each SNR in the sample into regions of similar surface brightness. These regions were fit with one- or two-component plasma shock model(s) in order to separate the forward-shocked interstellar medium from the reverse shock-heated ejecta which peak in the X-ray bands for elements including O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe. Dr. Braun and her collaborators subsequently derived the explosion properties for each SNR in the sample and found overall low explosion energies (<10^51 erg). To address their progenitor mass, they compared the measured abundances from our spectroscopic modelling to five of the most widely used explosion models and a relatively new electron-capture supernova model. Additionally, they explored degeneracy in the explosion energy and its effects on the progenitor mass estimates. However, no explosion models match all of the measured ejecta abundances for any of the SNRs in our sample. Therefore, she presented our best progenitor mass estimates and find overall low progenitor masses (<=25 solar masses) and we highlight the discrepancies between the observed data and the theoretical explosion models.

Reported by Shigehiro Nagataki