Turbulence and Particle Acceleration in Radiative Shock Waves in the Cygnus Loop II: Development of Postshock Turbulence

Abstract

Radiative shock waves in the Cygnus Loop and other supernova remnants show different morphologies in [O III] and Hα emission. We use HST spectra and narrowband images to study the development of turbulence in the cooling region behind a shock on the west limb of the Cygnus Loop. We refine our earlier estimates of shock parameters that were based upon ground-based spectra, including ram pressure, vorticity and magnetic field strength. We apply several techniques, including Fourier power spectra and the Rolling Hough Transform, to quantify the shape of the rippled shock front as viewed in different emission lines. We assess the relative importance of thermal instabilities, the thin shell instability, upstream density variations, and upstream magnetic field variations in producing the observed structure.

40 pages, 22 Figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (7)

• Destruction of Interstellar Dust in Evolving Supernova Remnant Shock Waves
• Binospec: A Wide-field Imaging Spectrograph for the MMT
• Shock Speed, Cosmic Ray Pressure, and Gas Temperature in the Cygnus Loop
• Turbulence and Energetic Particles in Radiative Shock Waves in the Cygnus Loop I: Shock Properties
• Localized enhancements of energetic particles at oblique collisionless shocks
• Fast Particle Acceleration at Perpendicular Shocks with Uniform Upstream Magnetic Field and Strong Downstream Turbulence
• Particle acceleration in a shock wave propagating to an inhomogeneous medium

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays as Revealed by their Composition
• The Hough Stream Spotter: A New Method for Detecting Linear Structure in Resolved Stars and Application to the Stellar Halo of M31
• An Updated Distance to the Cygnus Loop based on Gaia Early DR3
• Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
• The Origin of the Cluster of Local Interstellar Clouds
• Are the heliosphere, very local interstellar medium, and local cavity in pressure balance with Galactic gravity
• Shocks in the warm neutral medium I -- Theoretical model
• Proper motion of Cygnus loop shock filaments
• Shocks in the warm neutral medium II -- Origin of neutral carbon at high pressure
• Magnetic field properties of the SNR HB 9
• On the Determination of the Evolutionary Status of Supernova Remnants from Radio Observation Data