Thermal X-ray emission from supernova remnants in 3D (M)HD simulations

Every supernova (SN) injects around 10^51 ergs into the interstellar medium (ISM), shaping the ISM’s chemical, thermal, and dynamic evolution. Around 70% of the injected energy is subsequently lost by radiative cooling. However, the fate of the emitted cooling photons is usually neglected in simulations as the surrounding ISM is treated as optically thin. This makes high-resolution 3D simulations quite unphysical. The growing ability of X-ray spectroscopy allows observations of SN remnants (SNRs) to define pixel-by-pixel based parameters (such as plasma temperature, ionisation state, and abundance of different elements). We therefore urgently need more realistic simulations of SNRs.

In this talk, I will present state-of-the-art (magneto-)hydrodynamic simulations of SN explosions using the FLASH code, which include radiative cooling from the SN event. Radiative cooling is calculated on-the-fly and is fully consistent with the code’s radiative transfer, physics, and chemistry modules. Therefore, we created synthetic maps of the simulated SNR in several X-ray energy bands (e.g. Chandra energy bands in the range 0.1-10 keV) as well as for selected lines. These synthetic X-ray maps provide unique information about the physics of shock/cloud interactions, the general morphology of the remnants, as well as a better comparison (and prediction) for SNR observations.