30 May 2022 to 1 June 2022
Duinse Polders
Europe/Brussels timezone

Indication of a Pulsar Wind Nebula in SN 1987A

31 May 2022, 17:45
15m
congreszaal

congreszaal

Speaker

Emanuele Greco (University of Amsterdam)

Description

Since the day of its explosion, supernova (SN) 1987A has been closely monitored to study its evolution and to detect its central compact relic. In fact, the formation of a neutron star is strongly supported by the detection of neutrinos from the SN. However, besides the detection in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) data of a feature that is somehow compatible with the emission arising from a proto-pulsar wind nebula (PWN), the only hint for the existence of such elusive compact object is provided by the detection of hard emission in NuSTAR data up to 20 keV. I will discuss on the simultaneous analysis of multi-epoch observations of SN 1987A performed with Chandra, XMM and NuTAR. I will show comparison of the observations with a state-of-the-art 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of SN 1987A. A heavily absorbed power-law, consistent with the emission from a PWN embedded in the heart of SN 1987A, is needed to properly describe the high-energy part of the observed spectra. The spectral parameters of the best-fit power-law are in agreement with the previous estimate, and exclude diffusive shock acceleration as a possible mechanism responsible for the observed non-thermal emission. The information extracted from our analysis are used to infer the physical characteristics of the pulsar and the broad-band emission of its nebula, in agreement with the ALMA data. Analysis of the synthetic spectra also show that, in the near future, the main contribution to Fe K emission line will originate in the outermost shocked ejecta of SN 1987A..

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