A CHANDRA STUDY OF THE INTERSTELLAR METALLICITY IN THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD USING SUPERNOVA REMNANTS

Abstract

ABSTRACT We report on the results from our measurements of the interstellar medium (ISM) abundances for the elements O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We used the archival Chandra data for sixteen supernova remnants (SNRs) in the LMC (0453-68.5, DEM L71, N23, 0519-69.0, N49B, N132D, N49, N206, 0534-69.9, DEM L238, N63A, Honeycomb, N157B, 0540-69.3, DEM L316B, and 0548-70.4). Our results represent LMC abundance measurements based on the modern Chandra data. We place tight constraints on our measured elemental abundances and find lower abundances than previous measurements by Hughes et al. (by a factor of approximately two on average except for Si) who utilized similar methods based on a smaller sample of ASCA data of SNRs in the LMC. We discuss the origins of the discrepancy between our Chandra and the previous ASCA measurements. We also discuss our results in comparison with the LMC abundance measurements in the literature.