The Morphologies and Kinematics of Supernova Remnants

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding supernova remnants' shapes and motions, highlighting how improved simulations and observations, especially of Cassiopeia A, enhance our knowledge of supernova explosions.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent progress in modeling and observing SNRs, emphasizing the connection between SNR features and supernova progenitors, and discusses future observational prospects.

Findings

Simulations of supernova explosions have significantly improved.

Cassiopeia A provides detailed insights into supernova explosion complexity.

Future X-ray microcalorimeter observations promise to advance SNR studies.

Abstract

We review the major advances in understanding the morphologies and kinematics of supernova remnants (SNRs). Simulations of SN explosions have improved dramatically over the last few years, and SNRs can be used to test models through comparison of predictions with SNRs' observed large-scale compositional and morphological properties as well as the three-dimensional kinematics of ejecta material. In particular, Cassiopeia A -- the youngest known core-collapse SNR in the Milky Way -- offers an up-close view of the complexity of these explosive events that cannot be resolved in distant, extragalactic sources. We summarize the progress in tying SNRs to their progenitors' explosions through imaging and spectroscopic observations, and we discuss exciting future prospects for SNR studies, such as X-ray microcalorimeters