Optical spectroscopy of LMC SNRs to reveal the origin of [P II] knots

  • Published : 2021.10.13

Abstract

Observational studies of supernova (SN) feedback are limited. In our galaxy, most supernova remnants (SNRs) are located in the Galactic plane, so there is contamination from foreground/background sources. SNRs located in other galaxies are too far, so we cannot study them in detail. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a unique place to study the SN feedback due to their proximity, which makes possible to study the structure of individual SNRs in some detail together with their environment. Recently, we carried out a systematic study of 13 LMC SNRs using [P II] (1.189 ㎛) and [Fe II] (1.257 ㎛) narrowband imaging with SIRIUS/IRSF, four SNRs (SN 1987A, N158A, N157B and N206), show [P II]/[Fe II] ratio much higher than the cosmic abundance. While the high ratio of SN 1987A could be due to enhanced abundance in SN ejecta, we do not have a clear explanation for the other cases. We investigate the [P II] knots found in SNRs N206, N157B and N158A, using optical spectra obtained last November with GMOS-S mounted on Gemini-South telescope. We detected several emission lines (e.g., H I, [O I], He I, [O III], [N II] and [S II]) that are present in all three SNRs, among other lines that are only found in some of them (e.g., [Ne III], [Fe III] and [Fe II]). Various line ratios are measured from the three SNRs, which indicate that the ratios of N157B tend to differ from those of other two SNRs. We will use the abundances of He and N (from the detection of [N II] and He I emission lines), together with velocity measurements to tell whether the origin of the [P II] knots are SN ejecta or CSM/ISM. For this purpose we have built a family of radiative shock with self-consistent pre-ionization using MAPPINGS 5.1.18, with shock velocities in the range of 100 to 475 km/s. We will compare the observed and modeled line fluxes for different depletion factors.

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