Overionized plasma in the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East anchored by XRISM observations

TL;DR

This study reports the first XRISM observations of the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, revealing overionized plasma features, detailed ionization conditions, and potential cooling mechanisms linked to its unique environment near the Galactic center.

Contribution

First high-resolution XRISM spectroscopic analysis of Sagittarius A East, identifying overionized plasma and constraining its ionization state and dynamics.

Findings

Detection of fine structure Fe XXV lines and forbidden-to-resonance ratio indicating overionization

Ionization temperature constrained to > 4 keV before overionization

Recombination timescale and low velocity dispersion suggest rapid cooling or photoionization

Abstract

Sagittarius A East is a supernova remnant with a unique surrounding environment, as it is located in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center, Sagittarius A*. The X-ray emission of the remnant is suspected to show features of overionized plasma, which would require peculiar evolutionary paths. We report on the first observation of Sagittarius A East with X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). Equipped with a combination of high-resolution microcalorimeter spectrometer and large field-of-view CCD imager, we for the first time resolved the Fe XXV K-shell lines into fine structure lines and measured the forbidden-to-resonance intensity ratio to be $1.39\pm0.12$, which strongly suggests the presence of overionized plasma. We obtained a reliable constraint on the ionization temperature just before the transition into the overionization state, to be > 4 keV. The recombination timescale was constrained to be < $8\times10^{11}$ cm$^{-3}$ s. The small velocity dispersion of $109\pm6$ km s$^{-1}$ indicates a low Fe ion temperature < 8 keV and a small expansion velocity < 200 km s$^{-1}$. The high initial ionization temperature and small recombination timescale suggest that either rapid cooling of the plasma via adiabatic expansion from dense circumstellar material or intense photoionization by Sagittarius A* in the past may have triggered the overionization.