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Title: The Distribution of Radioactive 44Ti in Cassiopeia A

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [1];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [10];  [1];  [11];  [12];  [9];  [13];  [14];  [15];  [1];  [1] more »;  [1];  [16];  [17];  [18];  [17];  [1];  [1];  [9];  [19];  [20];  [3] « less
  1. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. West Virginia Wesleyan College, Buckhannon, WV (United States)
  5. Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States)
  6. North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
  7. Durham Univ. (United Kingdom)
  8. Univ. of Toulouse (France)
  9. Technical Univ. of Denmark, Lyngby (Denmark)
  10. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  11. ASI Science Data Center (ASDC), Rome (Italy)
  12. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States). Columbia Astrophysics Lab.
  13. Hiroshima Univ. (Japan)
  14. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  15. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
  16. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
  17. ASI Science Data Center (ASDC), Rome (Italy); Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF), Monteporizio (Italy)
  18. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  19. Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  20. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)

The distribution of elements produced in the inner-most layers of a supernova explosion is a key diagnostic for studying the collapse of massive stars. Here we present the results of a 2.4 Ms NuSTAR observing campaign aimed at studying the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). We perform spatially-resolved spectroscopic analyses of the 44Ti ejecta which we use to determine the Doppler shift and thus the three-dimensional (3D) velocities of the 44Ti ejecta. We nd an initial 44Ti mass of 1.54±0.21x10-4 M which has a present day average momentum direction of 340°±15° projected on to the plane of the sky (measured clockwise from Celestial North) and tilted by 58°±20° into the plane of the sky away from the observer, roughly opposite to the inferred direction of motion of the central compact object. We find some 44Ti ejecta that are clearly interior to the reverse shock and some that are clearly exterior to the reverse shock. Where we observe 44Ti ejecta exterior to the reverse shock we also see shock-heated iron; however, there are regions where we see iron but do not observe 44Ti. This suggests that the local conditions of the supernova shock during explosive nucleosynthesis varied enough to suppress the production of 44Ti in some regions by at least a factor of two, even in regions that are assumed to be the result of processes like α-rich freezeout that should produce both iron and titanium.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396; AC02-76SF00515
OSTI ID:
1345938
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1361151
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-16-26243; TRN: US1701086
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 834, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 49 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (23)

The Morphologies and Kinematics of Supernova Remnants journal February 2018
Nucleosynthesis in Supernovae journal March 2018
Low-frequency radio absorption in Cassiopeia A journal April 2018
Massive runaway and walkaway stars: A study of the kinematical imprints of the physical processes governing the evolution and explosion of their binary progenitors⋆ journal April 2019
Production and Distribution of 44 Ti and 56 Ni in a Three-dimensional Supernova Model Resembling Cassiopeia A journal June 2017
X-Ray Measurements of the Particle Acceleration Properties at Inward Shocks in Cassiopeia A journal January 2018
Parameterizing the Supernova Engine and Its Effect on Remnants and Basic Yields journal March 2018
Intermediate-mass Elements in Young Supernova Remnants Reveal Neutron Star Kicks by Asymmetric Explosions journal March 2018
Expansion and Brightness Changes in the Pulsar-wind Nebula in the Composite Supernova Remnant Kes 75 journal April 2018
The Origin of the Late-time Luminosity of Supernova 2011dh journal September 2019
Finding the Remnants of the Milky Way's Last Neutron Star Mergers journal July 2019
Evidence for Sub-Chandrasekhar Type Ia Supernovae from Stellar Abundances in Dwarf Galaxies journal August 2019
Gamma Rays from Kilonova: A Potential Probe of r -process Nucleosynthesis journal February 2020
Asymmetries of Heavy Elements in the Young Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A journal February 2020
Evidence for Rapid Adiabatic Cooling as an Origin of the Recombining Plasma in the Supernova Remnant W49B Revealed by NuSTAR Observations journal November 2018
Parameterizing the Supernova Engine and its Effects on Remnants and Basic Yields text January 2017
Expansion and Brightness Changes in the Pulsar-Wind Nebula in the Composite Supernova Remnant Kes 75 text January 2018
The Morphologies and Kinematics of Supernova Remnants text January 2018
Evidence for Rapid Adiabatic Cooling as an Origin of the Recombining Plasma in the Supernova Remnant W49B Revealed by NuSTAR Observations text January 2018
Asymmetries of Heavy Elements in the Young Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A text January 2019
Gamma-rays from kilonova: a potential probe of r-process nucleosynthesis text January 2019
The origin of the late-time luminosity of supernova 2011dh text January 2019
Massive Runaway and Walkaway Stars: A study of the kinematical imprints of the physical processes governing the evolution and explosion of their binary progenitor text January 2019

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