Supernova remnant W49B and its environment

TL;DR

This study analyzes the supernova remnant W49B and its environment using multi-wavelength infrared and radio data, revealing shock interactions, dust components, and molecular cloud associations to better understand its physical conditions and distance.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive multi-wavelength analysis of W49B, identifying shock-excited molecular gas, dust properties, and its association with surrounding molecular clouds for the first time.

Findings

Detected shocked H2 emission lines indicating SNR-molecular cloud interaction.

Identified hot and warm dust components with specific temperatures and masses.

Estimated a kinematic distance of approximately 10 kpc for W49B.

Abstract

We study Gamma-ray supernova remnant W49B and its environment using recent radio and infrared data. {\it Spitzer} IRS low resolution data of W49B shows shocked excitation lines of H$_{2}$ (0,0) S(0)-S(7) from the SNR-molecular cloud interaction. The H$_2$ gas is composed of two components with temperature of $\sim$260 K and $\sim$1060 K respectively. Various spectral lines from atomic and ionic particles are detected towards W49B. We suggest the ionic phase has an electron density of $\sim$500 cm${}^{-3}$ and a temperature of $\sim$${10^4}$ K by the spectral line diagnoses. The mid- and far-infrared data from {\it MSX}, {\it Spitzer} and {\it Herschel} reveals a 151 $\pm$ 20 K hot dust component with a mass of 7.5 $\pm$ 6.6 $\times$ ${10}^{-4} {\Msol}$ and a 45 $\pm$ 4 K warm dust component with a mass of 6.4 $\pm$ 3.2 ${\Msol}$. The hot dust is likely from materials swept up by the shock of W49B. The warm dust may possibly originate from the evaporation of clouds interacting with W49B. We build the HI absorption spectra of W49B and nearby four {\HII} regions (W49A, G42.90+0.58, G42.43-0.26 and G43.19-0.53), and study the relation between W49B and the surrounding molecular clouds by employing the 2.12 $\mu$m infrared and CO data. We therefore obtain a kinematic distance of $\sim$10 kpc for W49B and suggest that the remnant is likely associated with the CO cloud at about 40 km s$^{-1}$.