On the X-ray Properties of the Putative Central Compact Object in 1E 0102.2-7219

Abstract

We have analyzed the archival Chandra X-ray Observatory observations of the compact feature in the Small Magellanic Cloud supernova remnant (SNR) 1E 0102.2-7219 which has recently been suggested to be the Central Compact Object remaining after the supernova explosion. In our analysis, we have used appropriate, time-dependent responses for each of the archival observations, modeled the background instead of subtracting it, and have fit unbinned spectra to preserve the maximal spectral information. The spectrum of this feature is similar to the spectrum of the surrounding regions which have significantly enhanced abundances of O, Ne, \& Mg. We find that the previously suggested blackbody model is inconsistent with the data as Monte Carlo simulations indicate that more than 99\% of the simulated data sets have a test statistic value lower than that of the data. The spectrum is described adequately by a non-equilibrium ionization thermal model with two classes of models that fit the data equally well. One class of models has a temperature of $kT\sim 0.79$ keV, an ionization timescale of $\sim 3\times 10^{11}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}\mathrm{s}$, and marginal evidence for enhanced abundances of O and Ne and the other has a temperature of $kT\sim 0.91$ keV, an ionization timescale of $\sim 7\times 10^{10}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}\mathrm{s}$, and abundances consistent with local interstellar medium values. We also performed an image analysis and find that the spatial distribution of the counts is not consistent with that of a point source. The hypothesis of a point source distribution can be rejected at the 99.9\% confidence level. Therefore this compact feature is most likely a knot of O and Ne rich ejecta associated with the reverse shock.

Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (11)

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Physical Properties of the Supernova Remnant Population in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The TRAPUM Small Magellanic Cloud pulsar survey with MeerKAT: I. Discovery of seven new pulsars and two Pulsar Wind Nebula associations
• Spitzer and Herschel studies of dust in supernova remnants in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• TRAPUM upper limits on pulsed radio emission for SMC X-ray pulsar J0058-7218
• Searching for Surviving Companion in the Young SMC Supernova Remnant 1E 0102.2-7219