Spatially Resolved Spectral Analysis of Vela Shrapnel D

Abstract

The ROSAT all-sky survey discovered several `shrapnels', showing boomerang structures outside the Vela supernova remnant. We observed shrapnel D with the XMM-Newton satellite. There is an X-ray bright ridge structure in our FOV running from north to south. Applying the VNEI model to X-ray spectra of various regions, we find that the plasma in the eastern part from the X-ray ridge is significantly different from that in the western part. The X-ray spectra in the western part can be represented by a single-temperature component. The abundances of heavy elements are almost uniform, whereas they are heavily overabundant, except for Fe; the relative abundances to the solar values are O about 5, Ne about 10, Mg about 10, Fe about 1. This indicates that shrapnel D originated from the ejecta of the supernova. We find that the plasma in the eastern part from the ridge consists of two components with different temperatures; the hot component comes from the ejecta, while the cold component comes from the interstellar matter. These two components are considered to be in contact with each other, forming a contact discontinuity. Around the northern part of the contact discontinuity, we find wave-like structures of which the typical scale are comparable with that of the Rayleigh--Taylor instability.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure