paper

Evolution and observational signatures of the cosmic ray electron spectrum in SN 1006

arXiv:2006.06683 · doi:10.1093/mnras/staa2989

Abstract

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are believed to be the source of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs). SNR shocks accelerate CR protons and electrons which reveal key insights into the non-thermal physics by means of their synchrotron and -ray emission. The remnant SN 1006 is an ideal particle acceleration laboratory because it is observed across all electromagnetic wavelengths from radio to -rays. We perform three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations where we include CR protons and follow the CR electron spectrum. By matching the observed morphology and non-thermal spectrum of SN 1006 in radio, X-rays and -rays, we gain new insight into CR electron acceleration and magnetic field amplification. 1. We show that a mixed leptonic-hadronic model is responsible for the -ray radiation: while leptonic inverse-Compton emission and hadronic pion-decay emission contribute equally at GeV energies observed by Fermi, TeV energies observed by imaging air Cherenkov telescopes are hadronically dominated. 2. We show that quasi-parallel acceleration (i.e., when the shock propagates at a narrow angle to the upstream magnetic field) is preferred for CR electrons and that the electron acceleration efficiency of radio-emitting GeV electrons at quasi-perpendicular shocks is suppressed at least by a factor ten. This precludes extrapolation of current one-dimensional plasma particle-in-cell simulations of shock acceleration to realistic SNR conditions. 3. To match the radial emission profiles and the -ray spectrum, we require a volume-filling, turbulently amplified magnetic field and that the Bell-amplified magnetic field is damped in the immediate post-shock region. Our work connects micro-scale plasma physics simulations to the scale of SNRs.

arXiv comment18 pages, 18 figures, published in MNRAS

References in corpus (67)

Cited by in corpus (19)