Expansion Velocity of Ejecta in Tycho's Supernova Remnant Measured by Doppler Broadened X-ray Line Emission

TL;DR

This study measures the expansion velocities of ejecta in Tycho's supernova remnant using Doppler-broadened X-ray lines, revealing velocity differences among elements and estimating the remnant's distance.

Contribution

It introduces a method to determine ejecta velocities from X-ray line Doppler broadening, highlighting element segregation and providing a new distance estimate for Tycho's SNR.

Findings

Ejecta velocities for Si, S, Ar are ~4700 km/s

Fe ejecta expand at ~4000 km/s, indicating segregation

Distance to Tycho's SNR is estimated at 4 kpc

Abstract

We show that the expansion of ejecta in Tycho's supernova remnant (SNR) is consistent with a spherically symmetric shell, based on Suzaku measurements of the Doppler broadened X-ray emission lines. All the strong K_alpha line emission show broader widths at the center than at the rim, while the centroid energies are constant across the remnant (except for Ca). This is the pattern expected for Doppler broadening due to expansion of the SNR ejecta in a spherical shell. To determine the expansion velocities of the ejecta, we applied a model for each emission line feature having two Gaussian components separately representing red- and blue-shifted gas, and inferred the Doppler velocity difference between these two components directly from the fitted centroid energy difference. Taking into account the effect of projecting a three-dimensional shell to the plane of the detector, we derived average spherical expansion velocities independently for the K_alpha emission of Si, S, Ar, and Fe, and K_beta of Si. We found that the expansion velocities of Si, S, and Ar ejecta of 4700+/-100 km/s are distinctly higher than that obtained from Fe K_alpha emission, 4000+/-300 km/s, which is consistent with segregation of the Fe in the inner ejecta. Combining the observed ejecta velocities with the ejecta proper-motion measurements by Chandra, we derived a distance to the Tycho's SNR of 4+/-1 kpc.