Emission from cooling supernova shocks in MHD simulations

Abstract

Abstract Each supernova (SN) injects ∼ 1051 erg into the interstellar medium (ISM). The blast wave shocks the gas and heats it up to 107 K; the gas subsequently cools by emitting radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. Typically, about 70% of the initially injected SN energy is lost by radiative cooling. Thus an understanding of the radiative losses is needed to understand the evolution of supernova remnants, and to allow for comparisons between simulations and observations. We present a post-processing module for the FLASH code which calculates the cooling radiation from shock-heated gas in different energy bands. Using modern collision excitation data from MAPPINGS V, we produce maps of the SN emission at different wavelengths, allowing for a comparison to real observations of supernova remnants (SNRs) and for testing observational diagnostic tools. Here, we focus on optical line emission arising from the interaction between the shock wave and dense gas of a nearby molecular cloud and on the use of optical line ratios for determining the shock parameters.