The X-ray synchrotron emission of RCW 86 and the implications for its age

Several young supernova remnants (SNRs) have recently been detected in the high-energy and very-high-energy gamma-ray domains. As exemplified by RX J1713.7-3946, the nature of this emission has been hotly debated, and direct evidence for the efficient acceleration of cosmic-ray protons at the SNR shocks still remains elusive. We analyzed more than 40 months of data acquired by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on-board the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope in the HE domain, and ga...

We present the results of a detailed investigation of the Galactic supernova remnant RCW 86 using the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope. RCW 86 is the probable remnant of SN 185 A.D, a supernova that likely exploded inside a wind-blown cavity. We use the XMM-Newton Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) to derive precise temperatures and ionization ages of the plasma, which are an indication of the interaction history of the remnant with the presumed cavity. We find that the spectra ...

A precise measurement of shock velocities is crucial for constraining the mechanism and efficiency of cosmic-ray (CR) acceleration at supernova remnant (SNR) shock fronts. The northeastern rim of the SNR RCW 86 is thought to be a particularly efficient CR acceleration site, owing to the recent result in which an extremely high shock velocity of ~6000 km/s was claimed (Helder et al. 2009). Here we revisit the same SNR rim with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, 11 years after the ...

Cosmic rays are the most energetic particles arriving at earth. Although most of them are thought to be accelerated by supernova remnants, the details of the acceleration process and its efficiency are not well determined. Here we show that the pressure induced by cosmic rays exceeds the thermal pressure behind the northeast shock of the supernova remnant RCW 86, where the X-ray emission is dominated by synchrotron radiation from ultra-relativistic electrons. We determined th...

Particle acceleration physics at supernova remnant (SNR) shocks is one of the most intriguing problems in astrophysics. SNR RCW~86 provides a suitable environment for understanding the particle acceleration physics because one can extract the information of both accelerated particles and acceleration environment at the same regions through the bright X-ray emission. In this work, we study X-ray proper motions and spectral properties of the southwestern region of RCW~86. The p...

RCW 86 is a young supernova remnant (SNR) showing a shell-type structure at several wavelengths and is thought to be an efficient cosmic-ray (CR) accelerator. Earlier \textit{Fermi} Large Area Telescope results reported the detection of $\gamma$-ray emission coincident with the position of RCW 86 but its origin (leptonic or hadronic) remained unclear due to the poor statistics. Thanks to 6.5 years of data acquired by the \textit{Fermi}-LAT and the new event reconstruction Pas...

We present a spectral analysis of the Northern and Southwestern rim of the RCW86 X-ray shell, pointing out the remarkable differences between these two parts of the same object. In the North, a single temperature Non Equilibrium of Ionization emission model describes the data well, and the derived abundances of O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar and Fe are in agreement with expected metal depletion behind a fast shock moving in the interstellar medium. If the initial explosion energy was $...

We present a detailed spatially-resolved spectroscopic analysis of two X-ray observations (with a total integration time of 73280 seconds) made of the luminous northwestern rim complex of the Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) G266.2-1.2 (RX J0852.0-4622) with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. G266.2-1.2 is a member of a class of Galactic SNRs which feature X-ray spectra dominated by non-thermal emission: in the cases of these SNRs, the emission is believed to have a synchrotron o...

The supernova remnant (SNR) RX J0852-4622 (Vela Jr., G266.6-1.2) is one of the most important SNRs for investigating the acceleration of multi-TeV particles and the origin of Galactic cosmic rays because of its strong synchrotron X-ray and TeV gamma-ray emission, which show a shell-like morphology similar to each other. Using the XMM-Newton archival data consisting of multiple pointing observations of the northwestern rim of the remnant, we investigate the spatial properties ...

We report results from a multi-wavelength analysis of the Galactic SNR RCW 86, the proposed remnant of the supernova of 185 A.D. We report new infrared observations from {\it Spitzer} and {\it WISE}, where the entire shell is detected at 24 and 22 $\mu$m. We fit the infrared flux ratios with models of collisionally heated ambient dust, finding post-shock gas densities in the non-radiative shocks of 2.4 and 2.0 cm$^{-3}$ in the SW and NW portions of the remnant, respectively. ...