Progenitors and explosion properties of supernova remnants hosting central compact objects
| dc.contributor.author | Braun, Chelsea | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | O'Dea, Christopher (Physics and Astronomy) | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Mammei, Juliette (Physics and Astronomy) | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Bunt, Andrea (Computer Science) | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Kargaltsev, Oleg (George Washington University) | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Safi-Harb, Samar | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-09-07T15:42:20Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-09-07T15:42:20Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-08-24 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2023-08-24T17:01:01Z | en_US |
| dc.degree.discipline | Physics and Astronomy | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) | |
| dc.description.abstract | Massive stars end their lives in a catastrophic explosion known as a core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe). CCSNe explosions leave behind neutron stars, with a known diversity that includes the Central Compact Object (CCO). The nature of the CCO, however, remains a puzzle; in particular it's not clear whether they originate from a specific supernova subclass with a limited mass range. To address their supernova progenitors, we perform a systematic study on SNRs hosting CCOs that show evidence of shock-heated ejecta. We make use of primarily X-ray data obtained with the Chandra space telescope which has unparalleled imaging resolution in the 0.1-10 keV band where SNRs shine brightly. For the larger remnants, we also use the XMM-Newton telescope that has a larger field of view and higher sensitivity to low-surface brightness emission in the 0.1-10 keV band. This study takes a systematic approach to the analysis, where we use an algorithm to segment each SNR into regions of similar surface brightness for a spatially resolved spectroscopy study. These regions are fit by one- or two-component plasma shock model(s) in order to separate the forward shocked interstellar medium from the reverse shock-heated ejecta which peak in the X-ray band for elements O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe. We subsequently derive the explosion properties for each SNR in the sample and find overall low-energy explosions (<10^(51) ergs). In order to address the progenitor mass, we compare our measured abundances to the supernova ejecta yields of five of the most used nucleosynthesis explosion models in the literature and a relatively new electron-capture supernova model. We find that the explosion models commonly used by the astrophysics community do not match the ejecta yields for any of the SNRs. With this caveat, we present our best estimate for the progenitor mass of each SNR in our sample and find overall low-mass progenitors (<=25 solar masses) among the massive stars population. We discuss degeneracies in our model fitting, particularly how altering the explosion energy affects the progenitor mass, and the implications of our study for future modelling and observations to be acquired with next-generation missions. | |
| dc.description.note | October 2023 | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | University of Manitoba's GETS program | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/37603 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | astrophysics | |
| dc.subject | supernova remnants | |
| dc.title | Progenitors and explosion properties of supernova remnants hosting central compact objects | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | en_US |
| local.subject.manitoba | no |