Evidence for a shock-compressed magnetic field in the northwestern rim of Vela Jr. from X-ray polarimetry

Creators: Prokhorov, Dmitry A.^{1, 2}; Yang, Yi-Jung^{3, 4}; Ferrazzoli, Riccardo⁵; Vink, Jacco⁶; Slane, Patrick⁷; Costa, Enrico⁵; Silvestri, Stefano⁸; Zhou, Ping⁹; Bucciantini, Niccolò^{10, 11, 12}; Di Marco, Alessandro⁵; Weisskopf, Martin C.¹³; Baldini, Luca^{8, 14}; Doroshenko, Victor¹⁵; Ehlert, Steven R.¹³; Heyl, Jeremy¹⁶; Kaaret, Philip¹³; Kim, Dawoon E.^{5, 17, 18}; Marin, Frédéric¹⁹; Mizuno, Tsunefumi²⁰; Ng, Chi-Yung⁴; Pesce-Rollins, Melissa⁸; Sgrò, Carmelo⁸; Soffitta, Paolo⁵; Swartz, Douglas A.²¹; Tamagawa, Toru²²; Xie, Fei^{23, 5}; Agudo, Iván²⁴; Antonelli, Lucio A.^{25, 26}; Bachetti, Matteo²⁷; Baumgartner, Wayne H.¹³; Bellazzini, Ronaldo⁸; Bianchi, Stefano²⁸; Bongiorno, Stephen D.¹³; Bonino, Raffaella^{29, 30}; Brez, Alessandro⁸; Capitanio, Fiamma⁵; Castellano, Simone⁸; Cavazzuti, Elisabetta²⁶; Chen, Chien-Ting²¹; Ciprini, Stefano^{31, 26}; De Rosa, Alessandra⁵; Del Monte, Ettore⁵; Di Gesu, Laura²⁶; Di Lalla, Niccolò³²; Donnarumma, Immacolata²⁶; Dovčiak, Michal³³; Enoto, Teruaki²²; Evangelista, Yuri⁵; Fabiani, Sergio⁵; García, Javier A.³⁴; Gunji, Shuichi³⁵; Iwakiri, Wataru³⁶; Jorstad, Svetlana G.^{37, 38}; Karas, Vladimir³³; Kislat, Fabian³⁹; Kitaguchi, Takao²²; Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J.¹³; Krawczynski, Henric⁴⁰; La Monaca, Fabio^{5, 17, 18}; Latronico, Luca²⁹; Liodakis, Ioannis¹³; Maldera, Simone²⁹; Manfreda, Alberto⁴¹; Marinucci, Andrea²⁶; Marscher, Alan P.³⁷; Marshall, Herman L.⁴²; Massaro, Francesco^{29, 30}; Matt, Giorgio²⁸; Mitsuishi, Ikuyuki⁴³; Muleri, Fabio⁵; Negro, Michela⁴⁴; O'Dell, Stephen L.¹³; Omodei, Nicola³²; Oppedisano, Chiara²⁹; Papitto, Alessandro²⁵; Pavlov, George G.⁴⁵; Peirson, Abel L.³²; Perri, Matteo^{26, 25}; Petrucci, Pierre-Olivier⁴⁶; Pilia, Maura²⁷; Possenti, Andrea²⁷; Poutanen, Juri⁴⁷; Puccetti, Simonetta²⁶; Ramsey, Brian D.¹³; Rankin, John⁵; Ratheesh, Ajay⁵; Roberts, Oliver J.²¹; Romani, Roger W.³²; Spandre, Gloria⁸; Tavecchio, Fabrizio⁴⁸; Taverna, Roberto⁴⁹; Tawara, Yuzuru⁴³; Tennant, Allyn F.¹³; Thomas, Nicholas E.¹³; Tombesi, Francesco^{17, 31}; Trois, Alessio²⁷; Tsygankov, Sergey S.⁴⁷; Turolla, Roberto^{49, 50}; Wu, Kinwah⁵⁰; Zane, Silvia⁵⁰

1. University of Würzburg
2. Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica
3. National Central University
4. University of Hong Kong
5. National Institute for Astrophysics
6. University of Amsterdam
7. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
8. INFN Sezione di Pisa
9. Nanjing University
10. Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory
11. University of Florence
12. INFN Sezione di Firenze
13. Marshall Space Flight Center
14. University of Pisa
15. University of Tübingen
16. University of British Columbia
17. University of Rome Tor Vergata
18. Sapienza University of Rome
19. Observatory of Strasbourg
20. Hiroshima University
21. Universities Space Research Association
22. RIKEN
23. Guangxi University
24. Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía
25. Astronomical Observatory of Rome
26. Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
27. Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari
28. Roma Tre University
29. INFN Sezione di Torino
30. University of Turin
31. INFN Sezione di Roma II
32. Stanford University
33. Astronomical Institute
34. California Institute of Technology
35. Yamagata University
36. Chiba University
37. Boston University
38. St Petersburg University
39. University of New Hampshire
40. Washington University in St. Louis
41. INFN Sezione di Napoli
42. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
43. Nagoya University
44. Louisiana State University
45. Pennsylvania State University
46. Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble
47. University of Turku
48. Brera Astronomical Observatory
49. University of Padua
50. University College London

Abstract

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.

Copyright and License

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a joint US and Italian mission. 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”.

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