Protrusions Beyond the Blast Waves of Young Type Ia Supernova Remnants: Hydrodynamic Instabilities or Ejecta Bullets?
Abstract
High resolution imaging of two young Type Ia supernova remnants (SNRs), Tycho and SN 1006, has revealed several morphological features which have resisted explanation with numerical simulations. One such feature is the presence of shocked ejecta blobs protruding beyond the mean forward shock radius. Two current theories explain the presence of such ejecta: highly dense ejecta shrapnel produced in the explosion penetrating the forward shock, or plumes generated by hydrodynamic instabilities long after the initial explosion. We investigate the shrapnel theory through hydrodynamic simulations in 2D and 3D of the evolution of dense ejecta clumps embedded in an exponential density profile, appropriate for Type Ia supernovae. We use high-resolution 2D simulations to identify relevant clump parameters which we investigate further in 3D. In contradiction to some former work, we find that sufficiently resolved clumps in 2D models shatter upon collision with the forward shock, yielding new protrusion features. In both 2D and 3D, shrapnel is capable of penetrating the forward shock, but the resultant protrusions in 3D simulations vary significantly from those in similar 2D runs, implying 2D simulations may not be an accurate method of investigating the shrapnel theory. We compare the our simulations with Chandra observations of projections seen in Tycho and SN 1006. This work was performed as part of NC State University's Undergraduate Research in Computational Astrophysics (URCA) program, an REU program supported by the National Science Foundation through award AST-1032736.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #223
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22335320D