Discovery of Non Thermal X-Rays from the Northwest Shell of the New SNR RX J1713.7-3946: The Second SN1006 ?

Preprint

19 April 1997

preprint
Published by arXiv in arXiv

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.astro-ph/9704140

Abstract

We report ASCA results of a featureless X-ray spectrum from RX J1713.7-3946, a new shell-like SNR discovered with the ROSAT all sky survey. The northwest part of RX J1713.7-3946 was in the field of the ASCA Galactic Plane Survey Project and was found to exhibit a shell-like structure. The spectrum, however shows neither line emission nor any signature of a thermal origin. Instead, a power-law model with a photon index of 2.4-2.5 gives reasonable fit to the spectrum, suggesting a non-thermal origin. Together with the similarity to SN1006, we propose that RX J1713.7-3946 is the second example, after SN1006, of a synchrotron X-ray radiation from a shell of SNRs. Since the synchrotron X-rays suggest existence of extremely high energy charged particles in the SNR shell, our discovery should have strong impact on the origin of the cosmic X-rays.

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All Related Versions

Version 1, 1997-04-15, ArXiv
Version 2, 1997-04-19, ArXiv
Published version: Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, 49 (3), L7.

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