The Transition from Young to Middle-aged Supernova Remnants: Thermal and Nonthermal Aspects of SNR N132D

TL;DR

This study investigates the transition of SNR N132D from a young to middle-aged remnant, revealing its thermal state, gamma-ray origin, and energetic explosion characteristics through multi-wavelength spectroscopy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed spectral analysis indicating the transition stage of N132D, constraining plasma conditions, and confirming hadronic gamma-ray origin with implications for supernova energetics.

Findings

N132D exhibits a nearly equilibrium or recombining plasma.

Gamma-rays are likely hadronic in origin.

Supernova explosion was very energetic, with >10^51 erg thermal energy.

Abstract

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are the primary candidate of Galactic cosmic-ray accelerators. It is still an open issue when and how young SNRs, which typically exhibit strong synchrotron X-rays and GeV and TeV gamma-rays, undergo the state transition to middle-aged SNRs dominated by thermal X-rays and GeV gamma-rays. The SNR N132D in the Large Magellanic Cloud is an ideal target to study such a transition, exhibiting bright X-rays and gamma-rays, and with the expected age of ~2500 yrs. In this paper we present results of NuSTAR and Suzaku spectroscopy. We reveal that N132D has a nearly equilibrium plasma with a temperature of > 5 keV or a recombining plasma with a lower temperature (~1.5 keV) and a recombining timescale (net) of 8.8 (7.0--10.0)e12 cm^-3s. Together with the center filled morphology observed in the iron K line image, our results suggest that N132D is now at transition stage from a young SNR to middle-aged. We have constrained the tight upper-limit of nonthermal X-rays. Bright gamma-rays compared to faint nonthermal X-rays suggest that the gamma-rays are hadronic in origin. The spectral energy distribution from radio to gamma-rays shows a proton cut-off energy of ~30 TeV. These facts confirm that N132D is in the transition from young to middle-aged SNR. The large thermal energy of > 10^51 erg and accelerated proton energy of ~ 10^50 erg suggest the supernova explosion might have been very energetic.