Possible Evidence for Cosmic-Ray Acceleration in the Type Ia SNR RCW 86: Spatial Correlation between TeV Gamma-Rays and Interstellar Atomic Protons

Sano H, Rowell G, Reynoso EM, Jung-Richardt I, Yamane Y, Nagaya T, Yoshiike S, Hayashi K, Torii K, Maxted N, Mitsuishi I, Inoue T, Inutsuka S, Yamamoto H, Tachihara K, Fukui Y (2019)


Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2019

Journal

Book Volume: 876

Journal Issue: 1

DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab108f

Abstract

We present a detailed morphological study of TeV gamma-rays, synchrotron radiation, and interstellar gas in the young Type Ia supernova remnant (SNR) RCW 86. We find that the interstellar atomic gas shows good spatial correlation with the gamma-rays, indicating that the TeV gamma-rays from RCW 86 are likely predominantly of hadronic origin. In contrast, the spatial correlation between the interstellar molecular cloud and the TeV gamma-rays is poor in the southeastern shell of the SNR. We argue that this poor correlation can be attributed to the low-energy cosmic rays (similar to 1 TeV) not penetrating into the dense molecular cloud due to an enhancement of the turbulent magnetic field around the dense cloud of similar to 10-100 mu G. We also find that the southwestern shell, which is bright in both synchrotron X-ray and radio continuum radiation, shows a significant gamma-ray excess compared with the interstellar proton column density, suggesting that leptonic gamma-rays via inverse Compton scattering possibly contribute alongside the hadronic gamma-rays. The total cosmic-ray energies of the young TeV gamma-ray SNRs-RX J1713.7-3946, Vela Jr, HESS J1731-347, and RCW 86-are roughly similar, which indicates that cosmic rays can be accelerated in both the core-collapse and Type Ia supernovae. The total energy of cosmic rays derived using the gas density, similar to 10(48)-10(49) erg, gives a safe lower limit due mainly to the low filling factor of interstellar gas within the shell.

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APA:

Sano, H., Rowell, G., Reynoso, E.M., Jung-Richardt, I., Yamane, Y., Nagaya, T.,... Fukui, Y. (2019). Possible Evidence for Cosmic-Ray Acceleration in the Type Ia SNR RCW 86: Spatial Correlation between TeV Gamma-Rays and Interstellar Atomic Protons. Astrophysical Journal, 876(1). https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab108f

MLA:

Sano, H., et al. "Possible Evidence for Cosmic-Ray Acceleration in the Type Ia SNR RCW 86: Spatial Correlation between TeV Gamma-Rays and Interstellar Atomic Protons." Astrophysical Journal 876.1 (2019).

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