Evidence for a shock-compressed magnetic field in the northwestern rim of Vela Jr. from X-ray polarimetry
: Prokhorov, Dmitry A.; Yang, Yi-Jung; Ferrazzoli, Riccardo; Vink, Jacco; Slane, Patrick; Costa, Enrico; Silvestri, Stefano; Zhou, Ping; Bucciantini, Niccolo; Di Marco, Alessandro; Weisskopf, Martin C.; Baldini, Luca; Doroshenko, Victor; Ehlert, Steven R.; Heyl, Jeremy; Kaaret, Philip; Kim, Dawoon E.; Marin, Frederic; Mizuno, Tsunefumi; Ng, Chi-Yung; Pesce-Rollins, Melissa; Sgro, Carmelo; Soffitta, Paolo; Swartz, Douglas A.; Tamagawa, Toru; Xie, Fei; Agudo, Ivan; Antonelli, Lucio A.; Bachetti, Matteo; Baumgartner, Wayne H.; Bellazzini, Ronaldo; Bianchi, Stefano; Bongiorno, Stephen D.; Bonino, Raffaella; Brez, Alessandro; Capitanio, Fiamma; Castellano, Simone; Cavazzuti, Elisabetta; Chen, Chien-Ting; Ciprini, Stefano; De Rosa, Alessandra; Del Monte, Ettore; Di Gesu, Laura; Di Lalla, Niccolo; Donnarumma, Immacolata; Dovciak, Michal; Enoto, Teruaki; Evangelista, Yuri; Fabiani, Sergio; Garcia, Javier A.; Gunji, Shuichi; Iwakiri, Wataru; Jorstad, Svetlana G.; Karas, Vladimir; Kislat, Fabian; Kitaguchi, Takao; Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J.; Krawczynski, Henric; La Monaca, Fabio; Latronico, Luca; Liodakis, Ioannis; Maldera, Simone; Manfreda, Alberto; Marinucci, Andrea; Marscher, Alan P.; Marshall, Herman L.; Massaro, Francesco; Matt, Giorgio; Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki; Muleri, Fabio; Negro, Michela; O'Dell, Stephen L.; Omodei, Nicola; Oppedisano, Chiara; Papitto, Alessandro; Pavlov, George G.; Peirson, Abel L.; Perri, Matteo; Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier; Pilia, Maura; Possenti, Andrea; Poutanen, Juri; Puccetti, Simonetta; Ramsey, Brian D.; Rankin, John; Ratheesh, Ajay; Roberts, Oliver J.; Romani, Roger W.; Spandre, Gloria; Tavecchio, Fabrizio; Taverna, Roberto; Tawara, Yuzuru; Tennant, Allyn F.; Thomas, Nicholas E.; Tombesi, Francesco; Trois, Alessio; Tsygankov, Sergey S.; Turolla, Roberto; Wu, Kinwah; Zane, Silvia
Publisher: EDP SCIENCES S A
: LES ULIS CEDEX A
: 2024
: Astronomy and Astrophysics
: ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS
: ASTRON ASTROPHYS
: A59
: 692
: 11
: 0004-6361
: 1432-0746
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202452062
: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202452062
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/477927023
Synchrotron X-ray emission has been detected from nearly a dozen young supernova remnants (SNRs). X-rays of synchrotron origin exhibit linear polarization in a regular, non-randomly oriented magnetic field. The significant polarized X-ray emission from four such SNRs has already been reported on the basis of observations with the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). The magnetic-field structure as derived from IXPE observations is radial for Cassiopeia A, Tycho's SNR, and SN 1006, and tangential for RX J1713.7-3946. The latter together with the recent detection of a tangential magnetic field in SNR 1E 0102.2-7219 by the Australia Telescope Compact Array in the radio band shows that tangential magnetic fields can also be present in young SNRs. Thus, the dichotomy in polarization between young and middle-aged SNRs (radial magnetic fields in young SNRs, but tangential magnetic fields in middle-aged SNRs), previously noticed in the radio band, deserves additional attention. The present analysis of IXPE observations determines, for the first time, a magnetic-field structure in the northwestern rim of Vela Jr, also known as RX J0852.0-4622, and provides a new example of a young SNR with a tangential magnetic field.
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The US contribution is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and led and managed by its Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), with industry partner Ball Aerospace (contract NNM15AA18C). The Italian contribution is supported by the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, ASI) through contract ASI-OHBI-2022-13-I.0, agreements ASI-INAF-2022-19-HH.0 and ASI-INFN-2017.13-H0,
and its Space Science Data Center (SSDC) with agreements ASI-INAF-2022-14-HH.0 and ASI-INFN 2021-43-HH.0, and by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy. This
research used data products provided by the IXPE Team (MSFC, SSDC, INAF, and INFN) and distributed with additional software tools by the High-Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). D.P. acknowledges support by the European Research Council, ERC Starting grant “Mapping Highly-Energetic Messengers throughout the Universe”, under contract no. 949555. R.F., E.Co., A.D.M., P.So., S.F., F.L.M., F.Mu. are partially supported by MAECI with grant CN24GR08 “GRBAXP: Guangxi-Rome Bilateral Agreement for X-ray Polarimetry in Astrophysics”. N.B. was supported by the INAF MiniGrant “PWNnumpol–Numerical Studies of Pulsar Wind Nebulae in the Light of IXPE”.
