Hydrodynamic Evolution of Sgr A East: The Imprint of A Supernova Remnant in the Galactic Center

Abstract

We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations to study the hydrodynamic evolution of Sgr A East, the only known supernova remnant (SNR) in the center of our Galaxy, to infer its debated progenitor SN type and its potential impact on the Galactic center environment. Three sets of simulations are performed, each of which represents a represent a certain type of SN explosion (SN Iax, SN Ia or core-collapse SN) expanding against a nuclear outflow of hot gas driven by massive stars, whose thermodynamical properties have been well established by previous work and fixed in the simulations. All three simulations can simultaneously roughly reproduce the extent of Sgr A East and the position and morphology of an arc-shaped thermal X-ray feature, known as the "ridge". Confirming previous work, our simulations show that the ridge is the manifestation of a strong collision between the expanding SN ejecta and the nuclear outflow. The simulation of the core-collapse SN, with an assumed explosion energy of 5x10^50 erg and an ejecta mass of 10 M_sun, can well match the X-ray flux of the ridge, whereas the simulations of the SN Iax and SN Ia explosions underpredict its X-ray emission, due to a smaller ejecta mass. All three simulations constrain the age of Sgr A East to be <1500 yr and predict that the ridge should fade out over the next few hundred years. We address the implications of these results for our understanding of the Galactic center environment.

arXiv comment21 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication on MNRAS

References in corpus (61)

• Collisional Plasma Models with APEC/APED: Emission Line Diagnostics of Hydrogen-like and Helium-like Ions
• PLUTO: a Numerical Code for Computational Astrophysics
• The Galactic Center Massive Black Hole and Nuclear Star Cluster
• Birth and Evolution of Isolated Radio Pulsars
• Detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole
• The PLUTO Code for Adaptive Mesh Computations in Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics
• Type Iax Supernovae: A New Class of Stellar Explosion
• Stellar Populations in the Central 0.5 pc of the Galaxy II: The Initial Mass Function
• A new radiative cooling curve based on an up to date plasma emission code
• The old nuclear star cluster in the Milky Way: dynamics, mass, statistical parallax, and black hole mass
• Stellar and wind properties of massive stars in the central parsec of the Galaxy
• A Chandra Study of Sgr A East: A Supernova Remnant Regulating The Activity Of Our Galactic Center?
• Galactic Centre stellar winds and Sgr A* accretion
• Rayleigh-Taylor Instabilities in Young Supernova Remnants Undergoing Efficient Particle Acceleration
• A Dynamical Model for Hot Gas in the Galactic Center
• Using the X-ray Morphologies of Young Supernova Remnants to Constrain Explosion Type, Ejecta Distribution, and Chemical Mixing
• Ionization Equilibrium Timescales in Collisional Plasmas
• Variable accretion and emission from the stellar winds in the Galactic centre
• Hydrodynamical Accretion Onto Sgr A* From Distributed Point Sources
• Ab Initio Horizon-Scale Simulations of Magnetically Arrested Accretion in Sagittarius A* Fed by Stellar Winds
• Hydrodynamic Simulations of the Inner Accretion Flow of Sagittarius A* Fueled By Stellar Winds
• Echoes of multiple outbursts of Sagittarius A* revealed by Chandra
• Multiwavelength Constraints on Pulsar Populations in the Galactic Center
• G359.95-0.04: Pulsar Candidate Near Sgr A*
• Unprecedented variability of Sgr A* in NIR
• Inflow-Outflow Model with Conduction and Self-Consistent Feeding for Sgr A*
• Triaxial orbit-based modelling of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster
• The Surprisingly Small Impact of Magnetic Fields On The Inner Accretion Flow of Sagittarius A* Fueled By Stellar Winds
• Traces of past activity in the Galactic Centre
• The Nature of the Molecular Environment within 5 pc of the Galactic Center
• Diffuse X-Rays from the Inner 3 Parsecs of the Galaxy
• Accretion of cool stellar winds on Sgr A*: another puzzle of the Galactic Centre?
• Evidence for A Parsec-scale Jet from The Galactic Center Black Hole: Interaction with Local Gas
• Interstellar gas within $\sim 10$ pc of Sgr A${}^{\ast }$
• An Ultra-deep Chandra Catalog of X-ray Point Sources in the Galactic Center Star Cluster
• XMM-Newton observations of Sagittarius A East
• A Candidate Neutron Star Associated with Galactic Center Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East
• A Python Calculator for Supernova Remnant Evolution
• Old supernova dust factory revealed at the Galactic center
• Stellar winds pump the heart of the Milky Way
• A New Perspective of the Radio Bright Zone at The Galactic Center: Feedback from Nuclear Activities
• The X-ray Ridge Surrounding Sgr A* at the Galactic Center
• Molecular Gas Feeding the Circumnuclear Disk of the Galactic Center
• Numerical simulations of supernova remnants in turbulent molecular clouds
• Radio Detection of A Candidate Neutron Star Associated with Galactic Center Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East
• Chemical abundances in Sgr A East: evidence for a Type Iax supernova remnant
• Modelling the thermal X-ray emission around the Galactic Centre from colliding Wolf-Rayet winds
• The Sgr B2 X-ray Echo of the Galactic Center Supernova Explosion that Produced Sgr A East
• Three-Dimensional Observations of H_2 Emission around Sgr A East - I. Structure in the Central 10 Parsecs of Our Galaxy
• Galactic Center IRS13E: Colliding Stellar Winds or an Intermediate Mass Black Hole?
• Colliding Winds in and around the Stellar Group IRS 13E at the Galactic Center
• A population of compact radio variables and transients in the radio bright zone at the Galactic center observed with the Jansky Very Large Array
• A novel analytical model of the magnetic field configuration in the Galactic Center
• A Supernova-driven, Magnetically-collimated Outflow as the Origin of the Galactic Center Radio Bubbles
• Detection of a dense group of hyper-compact radio sources in the central parsec of the Galaxy
• Evolution of Supernova Remnants near the Galactic Center
• X-ray spectra of Sgr A East and diffuse X-ray background near the Galactic center
• How to create Sgr A East: Where did the supernova explode?
• Can supernova shells feed supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei?
• Chandra X-ray Measurement of Gas-phase Heavy Element Abundances in the Central Parsec of the Galaxy
• Flash-light on the Ring: hydrodynamic simulations of expandingsupernova shells near supermassive black holes

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Discovery of an Active Wind from the Milky Way's Black Hole
• High Energy Emission from the Galactic Center