Evidence for Proportionate Partition Between the Magnetic Field and Hot Gas in Turbulent Cassiopeia A

Abstract

We present a deep X-ray observation of the young Galactic supernova remnant Cas A, acquired with the ROSAT High Resolution Imager. This high dynamic range (232 ks) image reveals low-surface-brightness X-ray structure, which appears qualitatively similar to corresponding radio features. We consider the correlation between the X-ray and radio morphologies and its physical implications. After correcting for the inhomogeneous absorption across the remnant, we performed a point by point (4" resolution) surface brightness comparison between the X-ray and radio images. We find a strong (r = 0.75) log-log correlation, implying an overall relationship of $\log ({\Sigma }_{{}_{\mathrm{X}-\mathrm{ray}}})\propto (2.21\pm 0.05)\times \log ({\Sigma }_{{}_{\mathrm{radio}}})$. This is consistent with proportionate partition (and possibly equipartition) between the local magnetic field and the hot gas --- implying that Cas A's plasma is fully turbulent and continuously amplifying the magnetic field.

8 pages with embedded bitmapped figures, Accepted by ApJ Letters 5/1/98

References in corpus (1)

• The X-ray Expansion of the Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A

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