Radio emission from interstellar shocks: Young type Ia supernova remnants and the case of N 103B in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

We investigate young type Ia supernova remnants (SNRs) in our Galaxy and neighbouring galaxies in order to understand their properties and early stage of their evolution. Here we present a radio continuum study based on new and archival data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) towards N 103B, a young (≤1000 yrs) spectroscopically confirmed type Ia SNR in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and proposed to have originated from a single degenerate (SD) progenitor. The radio morphology of this SNR is asymmetrical with two bright regions towards the north-west and south-west of the central location as defined by radio emission. N 103B identified features include: a radio spectral index of − 0.75 ± 0.01 (consistent with other young type Ia SNRs in the Galaxy); a bulk SNR expansion rate as in X-rays; morphology and polarised electrical field vector measurements where we note radial polarisation peak towards the north-west of the remnant at both 5500 and 9000 MHz. The spectrum is concave-up and the most likely reason is the non-linear diffusive shock acceleration (NLDSA) effects or presence of two different populations of ultra-relativistic electrons. We also note unpolarised clumps near the south-west region which is in agreement with this above scenario. We derive a typical magnetic field strength for N 103B of 16.4 μG for an average rotation measurement of 200radm−2. However, we estimate the equipartition field to be of the order of ∼235 μG with an estimated minimum energy of Emin=6.3×1048erg. The close (∼ 0.5 ∘) proximity of N 103B to the LMC mid-plane indicates that an early encounter with dense interstellar medium may have set an important constrain on SNR evolution. Finally, we compare features of N 103B to six other young type Ia SNRs in the LMC and Galaxy, with a range of proposed degeneracy scenarios to highlight potential differences due to a different models. We suggest that the single degenerate scenario might point to morphologically asymmetric type Ia supernova explosions.