Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Scientific paper
2009-09-21
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
5 pages, 5 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter
Scientific paper
We present the Suzaku spectroscopic study of the Galactic middle-aged supernova remnant (SNR) IC 443. The X-ray spectrum in the 1.75-6.0 keV band is described by an optically-thin thermal plasma with the electron temperature of 0.6 keV and several additional Lyman lines. We robustly detect, for the first time, strong radiative recombination continua (RRC) of H-like Si and S around at 2.7 and 3.5 keV. The ionization temperatures of Si and S determined from the intensity ratios of the RRC to He-like K-alpha line are 1.0 keV and 1.2 keV, respectively. We thus find firm evidence for an extremely-overionized (recombining) plasma. As the origin of the overionization, a thermal conduction scenario argued in previous work is not favored in our new results. We propose that the highly-ionized gas were made at the initial phase of the SNR evolution in dense regions around a massive progenitor, and the low electron temperature is due to a rapid cooling by an adiabatic expansion.
Hiraga Junko S.
Koyama Katsuji
Masai Kuniaki
Ozaki Masanobu
Ozawa Midori
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